Naomi’s home—its sights, smells, sounds, and interactions—is forever a place of love.
A community archive is preserved in a unique mural.
Community sits at the heart of Naomi’s life—evidenced by the city panorama on the title spread. Naomi, a beige-skinned young girl with straight brown hair and a big smile, pokes her head out the window to see her world, full of bustle and life. Cars, bicycles, and buses rush by, past the hair salon, the mechanic, the pizzeria. A ribbon of musical notes swirls around Naomi and her busy block, denoting the noisy joy of urban life. With her best friend, Ada, a Black girl, Naomi climbs a tree, rides scooters along the block, and draws pictures in sidewalk chalk. At dusk, Naomi and her family say goodnight to the lively neighborhood. All seems well until Naomi’s world begins to change. The tree is cut down, Ada moves away, and stores begin to shut—falling victim to gentrification and urban renewal. With help from her shopkeeper friend Mr. Ray, a Black man, Naomi paints what she loves most about her neighborhood in a mural on her building. Little by little, though her world has altered, her mural grows until at last her community is preserved in vivid colors. Yamasaki and Lendler’s straightforward yet poignant text nicely complements Yamasaki’s whimsical yet grounded illustrations that depict this portrait of urban connection. Her bright, bold palette is eye-catching, with carefully portrayed diverse neighbors, young and old.
Naomi’s home—its sights, smells, sounds, and interactions—is forever a place of love. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-324-00491-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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