Endearing, engaging, and environmentalist.
A sequel to Billions of Bricks (2016) follows one family’s never-ending tree-planting project.
“We never meant to plant a tree,” says a brown-skinned kid with straight dark hair. Sister Lizzie, apparently White with light brown hair, asked for “a trillium, please,” but the plant store employee misheard her, dooming the siblings and their parents (who look like older versions of Lizzie) to a hopelessly huge arboreal job, planting the first shipment of 1,000 in batches of 100 wherever they can find room. While the narrator first appears oddly disembodied against a white background, the following full-bleed illustrations are detailed and dynamic. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to count 100 trees in a spread, no matter how well the illustrator spaces them out. The text also doesn’t make it totally clear that 10 hundreds add up to make “a thousand” by the end. Rather than a counting exercise, this book might better serve as an introduction to tree types: “Spruce and hemlock. Cedar, too. / A fir for her, a yew for you.” As in Billions, the kids join a multiracial group of neighbors, planting in parks, along roadsides, and even amid the remains of a fire. Turn the book vertically for one spread showing a full-grown sequoia. The rhymes aren’t quite as snappy as the ones in Billions, but they’re still fun. With any luck, the note that “there are more than three trillion trees in the world” will give readers enough of a sense of the 999,999,999,000-tree gap between a thousand and a trillion. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-17-inch double-page spreads viewed at 45% of actual size.)
Endearing, engaging, and environmentalist. (tree facts) (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-22907-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender...
A polar-bear parent speaks poetically of love for a child.
A genderless adult and cub travel through the landscapes of an arctic year. Each of the softly rendered double-page paintings has a very different feel and color palette as the pair go through the seasons, walking through wintry ice and snow and green summer meadows, cavorting in the blue ocean, watching whales, and playing beside musk oxen. The rhymes of the four-line stanzas are not forced, as is the case too often in picture books of this type: “When cold, winter winds / blow the leaves far and wide, / You’ll cross the great icebergs / with me by your side.” On a dark, snowy night, the loving parent says: “But for now, cuddle close / while the stars softly shine. // I’ll always be yours, / and you’ll always be mine.” As the last illustration shows the pair curled up for sleep, young listeners will be lulled to sweet dreams by the calm tenor of the pictures and the words. While far from original, this timeless theme is always in demand, and the combination of delightful illustrations and poetry that scans well make this a good choice for early-childhood classrooms, public libraries, and one-on-one home read-alouds.
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender restrictions. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68010-070-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
A visually striking, engaging picture book that sends the message that everyone counts.
A playful counting book also acts as a celebration of family and human diversity.
Shannon’s text is delivered in spare, rhythmic, lilting verse that begins with one and counts up to 10 as it presents different groupings of things and people in individual families, always emphasizing the unitary nature of each combination. “One is six. One line of laundry. One butterfly’s legs. One family.” Gomez’s richly colored pictures clarify and expand on all that the text lists: For “six,” a picture showing six members of a multigenerational family of color includes a line of laundry with six items hanging from it outside of their windows, as well as the painting of a six-legged butterfly that a child in the family is creating. While text never directs the art to depict diverse individuals and family constellations, Gomez does just this in her illustrations. Interracial families are included, as are depictions of men with their arms around each other, and a Sikh man wearing a turban. This inclusive spirit supports the text’s culminating assertion that “One is one and everyone. One earth. One world. One family.”
A visually striking, engaging picture book that sends the message that everyone counts. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-374-30003-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
