A powerful tale about finding purpose and strength in the face of extreme adversity.
In the bleak Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, a brave group of young Hmong children, all cousins, rises up to help those they love.
Led by 10-year-old Master Me, the cousins spend their time training to protect themselves and others. Driven by a sense of duty that defies their age, the group undertakes a risky mission to leave the camp and retrieve vegetables for the younger children. Their fortitude and sacrifice leave an indelible mark on the younger children, giving them their “first taste of freedom” and the courage to keep enduring for a better life. The story springs from Yang’s experience as a child in Ban Vinai, and she narrates with a reflective, retrospective tone, incorporating sensory details that lend immediacy: Readers will taste that bravely foraged meal. Thao’s strong use of perspective highlights the oppressive nature of the camp, with its linear row of dwellings and towering trees standing sentinel. Shadows are dramatically rendered, Master Me’s taking shape in the form of a Hmong heart symbol, representing his role as a leader and as the one “who cares the most.” Within the dull and muted landscape, the warrior children stand out as contrasting pops of bright color symbolizing their resistance and role as bearers of hope. Alas, clunky, repetitive design impedes readers’ immersion in the book. The author and illustrator, who is also Hmong, each contribute a moving note.
A powerful tale about finding purpose and strength in the face of extreme adversity. (Picture book/memoir. 6-10)Pub Date: April 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5179-0798-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
A reasonably solid grounding in constitutional rights, their flexibility, lacunae, and hard-won corrections, despite a few...
Shamir offers an investigation of the foundations of freedoms in the United States via its founding documents, as well as movements and individuals who had great impacts on shaping and reshaping those institutions.
The opening pages of this picture book get off to a wobbly start with comments such as “You know that feeling you get…when you see a wide open field that you can run through without worrying about traffic or cars? That’s freedom.” But as the book progresses, Shamir slowly steadies the craft toward that wide-open field of freedom. She notes the many obvious-to-us-now exclusivities that the founding political documents embodied—that the entitled, white, male authors did not extend freedom to enslaved African-Americans, Native Americans, and women—and encourages readers to learn to exercise vigilance and foresight. The gradual inclusion of these left-behind people paints a modestly rosy picture of their circumstances today, and the text seems to give up on explaining how Native Americans continue to be left behind. Still, a vital part of what makes freedom daunting is its constant motion, and that is ably expressed. Numerous boxed tidbits give substance to the bigger political picture. Who were the abolitionists and the suffragists, what were the Montgomery bus boycott and the “Uprising of 20,000”? Faulkner’s artwork conveys settings and emotions quite well, and his drawing of Ruby Bridges is about as darling as it gets. A helpful timeline and bibliography appear as endnotes.
A reasonably solid grounding in constitutional rights, their flexibility, lacunae, and hard-won corrections, despite a few misfires. (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-54728-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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