Heartbreaking yet warmly tinged with hope.
An Armenian grandfather reflects on his past.
Cooking with his mama, a young boy has no reason to believe anything is out of the ordinary. But people are leaving town, and Mama tells the child and his sisters that they must go, too. She and their father will follow soon. The boy has much he wants to express, but he has lost the words. He endures a long, weary march through the desert and makes it to safety but doesn’t reunite with his parents. The boy grows older and has children and grandchildren. The pain recedes, but the words don’t return—until his grandson, on a day so like the first, asks where they are from. Stories of the Armenian genocide are rarely committed to paper, but nearly every diasporic Armenian family has them, keeping them as close as the ubiquitous sepia-toned photos of relatives whose lives were lost but whose names remain. Though inspired by the experiences of the author’s husband’s grandfather, this is also the story of the countless children forced to leave their homes for reasons they couldn’t articulate and of their children and grandchildren, who will always strive to know where they come from. The warm, soft illustrations add a dreamlike quality to the spare words, moving in their simplicity. The tale might seem detached on the surface, but it can hardly be anything else, when the words to tell it fully have been lost.
Heartbreaking yet warmly tinged with hope. (author’s and illustrator’s notes, history of the Armenian genocide, facts about Armenia, glossary, selected bibliography) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9781797213651
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A unique angle on a watershed moment in the civil rights era.
The New Orleans school child who famously broke the color line in 1960 while surrounded by federal marshals describes the early days of her experience from a 6-year-old’s perspective.
Bridges told her tale to younger children in 2009’s Ruby Bridges Goes to School, but here the sensibility is more personal, and the sometimes-shocking historical photos have been replaced by uplifting painted scenes. “I didn’t find out what being ‘the first’ really meant until the day I arrived at this new school,” she writes. Unfrightened by the crowd of “screaming white people” that greets her at the school’s door (she thinks it’s like Mardi Gras) but surprised to find herself the only child in her classroom, and even the entire building, she gradually realizes the significance of her act as (in Smith’s illustration) she compares a small personal photo to the all-White class photos posted on a bulletin board and sees the difference. As she reflects on her new understanding, symbolic scenes first depict other dark-skinned children marching into classes in her wake to friendly greetings from lighter-skinned classmates (“School is just school,” she sensibly concludes, “and kids are just kids”) and finally an image of the bright-eyed icon posed next to a soaring bridge of reconciliation. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A unique angle on a watershed moment in the civil rights era. (author and illustrator notes, glossary) (Autobiographical picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-75388-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
A sweet and endearing feathered migration.
A relationship between a Latina grandmother and her mixed-race granddaughter serves as the frame to depict the ruby-throated hummingbird migration pattern.
In Granny’s lap, a girl is encouraged to “keep still” as the intergenerational pair awaits the ruby-throated hummingbirds with bowls of water in their hands. But like the granddaughter, the tz’unun—“the word for hummingbird in several [Latin American] languages”—must soon fly north. Over the next several double-page spreads, readers follow the ruby-throated hummingbird’s migration pattern from Central America and Mexico through the United States all the way to Canada. Davies metaphorically reunites the granddaughter and grandmother when “a visitor from Granny’s garden” crosses paths with the girl in New York City. Ray provides delicately hashed lines in the illustrations that bring the hummingbirds’ erratic flight pattern to life as they travel north. The watercolor palette is injected with vibrancy by the addition of gold ink, mirroring the hummingbirds’ flashing feathers in the slants of light. The story is supplemented by notes on different pages with facts about the birds such as their nest size, diet, and flight schedule. In addition, a note about ruby-throated hummingbirds supplies readers with detailed information on how ornithologists study and keep track of these birds.
A sweet and endearing feathered migration. (bibliography, index) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0538-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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