Cute but unconvincing.
“All the best things / come in three” burbles the twin-ponytailed Asian-American 3-year-old who narrates the rhyme.
The little girl is joined by a redheaded white boy with rosy cheeks and an African-American girl with a curly topknot. From three bears and three pigs to three primary colors (“Red, yellow, and blue”—each word in its proper hue), the text progresses to more nuanced concepts. Examples of learning about sharing, time-outs, and the occasional mess at dinner are tucked in. There’s some difficulty in accepting the language and activities as genuinely rising from 3-year-olds, though. The redheaded boy writes the first three letters of the alphabet neatly on a blackboard. The topknotted girl has a backpack with a Book of Haiku in it. They play hopscotch and hide-and-seek. The narrator’s favorite treat is a Neapolitan ice cream cone, clearly delineated in the pictures but very large indeed for a 3-year-old, even if she knows the name of it. At the end, the two girls are shown reading to themselves before bed, surely rare for the age. (The redheaded boy is already asleep.) The pictures, made with cut paper, ink, and pencil, are full of delightful bits and pieces that are often a little surreal: three chickens whose word balloons are French, for example.
Cute but unconvincing. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-525-42869-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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
An accessible entrance into the world of social-emotional skills.
What do you do when the world turns upside down?
Freckled redhead Tilda is a happy only child with a rollicking personality. With lots of books and toys and a multiracial group of friends, life is perfect as far as she’s concerned…until her world undergoes a troubling change (a subtle hint in the illustrations suggests that Tilda’s parents have divorced). Suddenly, nothing feels right, everything seems hard, and she doesn’t want to play with her friends. To reflect this emotional disorientation, the artwork shows Tilda in spatially distorted settings, complete with upside-down objects. It’s not until she sees an upturned ladybug struggle persistently before getting back on its feet (despite Tilda’s desire to help, the ladybug needs to help itself) that Tilda gains the courage to start taking baby steps in order to cope with her new reality. There are still challenges, and she needs to persevere, but eventually, she regains her zest for life and reconnects with her friends. Despite this, the ending avoids an easy happily-ever-after, which feels just right for the subject matter. Though a trifle didactic, the story sends an important message about the roles of self-efficacy and persistence when it comes to overcoming challenges and building resilience. Percival’s digital illustrations use transitions from grayscale to color to create symbolic meaning and have psychological depth, deftly capturing a child’s experience of trauma.
An accessible entrance into the world of social-emotional skills. (author's note) (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0822-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
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