A friendly, useful, and nicely illustrated guide for kids facing surgery.
A little girl feels nervous about undergoing minor surgery in this debut picture book.
Sunday, a small, pale-skinned girl with unkempt brown hair, is about to have surgery to fix a small tear in her eardrum. She’s worried but has ticked all the boxes on her checklist— everything from a packed bag to a “stomach in knots like a triple-tied shoelace.” At the hospital, she encounters unfamiliar procedures like wearing a plastic identity bracelet and getting an IV, but the nurse’s encouraging words help her to be brave. She also calms herself down with pleasant daydreams. After the operation, she’s tired and groggy for a while but soon feels like herself again, and hears better too. In her book, Harrison soothes fears by helping kids know what to expect before surgery. The story nicely balances Sunday’s anxiety with her humorous voice and active imagination. She’s encouraged to be brave but in a way that acknowledges her understandable nerves; adults are kind and reassuring. Also useful are a list of five rules for surgery, such as bringing a toy or other item, and several questions adults can use to help children talk through their fears. Crampton provides cheerful, appealingly detailed images in calming pastels that feature a diverse cast.
A friendly, useful, and nicely illustrated guide for kids facing surgery. (Questions to Ask Someone (or Yourself!) Before Surgery” [26])Pub Date: March 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73470-750-2
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Warren Publishing, Inc.
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Sweet but misleading.
A plucky child becomes a space traveler.
Arceneaux was the first pediatric cancer survivor and the first with a prosthetic body part to become an astronaut, part of the first all-civilian space mission in 2021. The author, who in 2022 published the adult memoir Wild Ride and its 2023 adaptation for middle-grade readers, here shares her story with an even younger audience. Told in the third person, the narrative emphasizes the bravery she summoned as she coped with a cancer that left her with a prosthetic leg bone and knee (hinted at with an incision line in one illustration) and went on to become a space traveler. Curiously, Hayley and her astronaut colleagues are portrayed as children. They play with a “stuffed toy alien,” and in an imagined episode, Hayley ventures outside the spacecraft to perform a repair. Accompanied by softly hued illustrations with character designs that recall Precious Moments figurines, the narrative emphasizes familiar details of space travel that will appeal to children; both their bodies and their food float in zero gravity. The mission splashes down safely, and Hayley rushes to hug her mom. Though Arceneaux was the youngest astronaut to have orbited the Earth, she was an adult when she did so. The odd choice to depict her as a child reduces her compelling story to a fantasy. Arceneaux is white; other characters are diverse.
Sweet but misleading. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593443903
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Convergent
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions.
Ellis, known for her illustrations for Colin Meloy’s Wildwood series, here riffs on the concept of “home.”
Shifting among homes mundane and speculative, contemporary and not, Ellis begins and ends with views of her own home and a peek into her studio. She highlights palaces and mansions, but she also takes readers to animal homes and a certain famously folkloric shoe (whose iconic Old Woman manages a passel of multiethnic kids absorbed in daring games). One spread showcases “some folks” who “live on the road”; a band unloads its tour bus in front of a theater marquee. Ellis’ compelling ink and gouache paintings, in a palette of blue-grays, sepia and brick red, depict scenes ranging from mythical, underwater Atlantis to a distant moonscape. Another spread, depicting a garden and large building under connected, transparent domes, invites readers to wonder: “Who in the world lives here? / And why?” (Earth is seen as a distant blue marble.) Some of Ellis’ chosen depictions, oddly juxtaposed and stripped of any historical or cultural context due to the stylized design and spare text, become stereotypical. “Some homes are boats. / Some homes are wigwams.” A sailing ship’s crew seems poised to land near a trio of men clad in breechcloths—otherwise unidentified and unremarked upon.
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6529-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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