A stylish and lovely perspective on happenstance.
A meditation on the not-so-accidental circumstances that bring us together.
Ellie, the hardest-working elevator on 74th Street, spends her days cheerfully ferrying residents from floor to floor. She loves her job and the occupants she provides bespoke service to; she modulates the volume of the music she plays for hard-of-hearing Mrs. Sanchez, and she patiently waits for Mr. Chen, who uses a cane. But no tenant is dearer than Thea, a fashionable, bespectacled adolescent. After Thea’s best friend relocates to the West Coast, Ellie kicks her care into overdrive, making each trip extra pleasant for the girl in an effort to ease her heartbreak. When her usual tricks don’t provide their intended lift, Ellie hatches a matchmaking plan, staging scenarios meant to foster friendship between Thea and a new neighbor named Claire and effecting kindnesses that go neither unnoticed nor unrewarded. A charming retro-futurism suffuses the story in both plot and aesthetic; Gehl’s comfortable and familiar narrative is an apt match for the vintage-feeling images that enliven our anthropomorphized protagonist. Imamura’s grounding use of negative space brings visual texture to each spread, as do the occasional pops of neon yellow that stipple an earth-toned palette. Ellie’s robotic visage is just subtle enough to make her reveal as the main character a delightful surprise, an unexpected start to an otherwise-understated tale. Thea presents East Asian, and Claire is Black; peripheral characters are diverse.
A stylish and lovely perspective on happenstance. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9781665905077
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
Inspiration, shrink wrapped.
From an artist, poet, and Instagram celebrity, a pep talk for all who question where a new road might lead.
Opening by asking readers, “Have you ever wanted to go in a different direction,” the unnamed narrator describes having such a feeling and then witnessing the appearance of a new road “almost as if it were magic.” “Where do you lead?” the narrator asks. The Road’s twice-iterated response—“Be a leader and find out”—bookends a dialogue in which a traveler’s anxieties are answered by platitudes. “What if I fall?” worries the narrator in a stylized, faux hand-lettered type Wade’s Instagram followers will recognize. The Road’s dialogue and the narration are set in a chunky, sans-serif type with no quotation marks, so the one flows into the other confusingly. “Everyone falls at some point, said the Road. / But I will always be there when you land.” Narrator: “What if the world around us is filled with hate?” Road: “Lead it to love.” Narrator: “What if I feel stuck?” Road: “Keep going.” De Moyencourt illustrates this colloquy with luminous scenes of a small, brown-skinned child, face turned away from viewers so all they see is a mop of blond curls. The child steps into an urban mural, walks along a winding country road through broad rural landscapes and scary woods, climbs a rugged metaphorical mountain, then comes to stand at last, Little Prince–like, on a tiny blue and green planet. Wade’s closing claim that her message isn’t meant just for children is likely superfluous…in fact, forget the just.
Inspiration, shrink wrapped. (Picture book. 6-8, adult)Pub Date: March 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-26949-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends
Gerald the elephant learns a truth familiar to every preschooler—heck, every human: “Waiting is not easy!”
When Piggie cartwheels up to Gerald announcing that she has a surprise for him, Gerald is less than pleased to learn that the “surprise is a surprise.” Gerald pumps Piggie for information (it’s big, it’s pretty, and they can share it), but Piggie holds fast on this basic principle: Gerald will have to wait. Gerald lets out an almighty “GROAN!” Variations on this basic exchange occur throughout the day; Gerald pleads, Piggie insists they must wait; Gerald groans. As the day turns to twilight (signaled by the backgrounds that darken from mauve to gray to charcoal), Gerald gets grumpy. “WE HAVE WASTED THE WHOLE DAY!…And for WHAT!?” Piggie then gestures up to the Milky Way, which an awed Gerald acknowledges “was worth the wait.” Willems relies even more than usual on the slightest of changes in posture, layout and typography, as two waiting figures can’t help but be pretty static. At one point, Piggie assumes the lotus position, infuriating Gerald. Most amusingly, Gerald’s elephantine groans assume weighty physicality in spread-filling speech bubbles that knock Piggie to the ground. And the spectacular, photo-collaged images of the Milky Way that dwarf the two friends makes it clear that it was indeed worth the wait.
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends . (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-9957-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
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