Though preachy, this simple, creatively illustrated story encourages empathy and compassion.
Imagine what you would do with a magic pencil.
Margarita, who lives with her two dads, has a play date with Daniel and Charlie, who have two moms. On the way to the park, they see their neighbor Mrs. Cranky’s hungry cat and feed it even though it means buying milk and jumping over Mrs. Cranky’s fence. They expect Mrs. Cranky to be mad at them, but she rewards their kindness with a magic pencil (for Margarita), a sharpener (for Daniel), and an eraser (for Charlie). The trio soon learn that whatever the pencil draws becomes real. Thankfully, the magic eraser solves the problem of a castle in the middle of the road that blocks traffic. Too soon, the pencil wears down, and the children realize they’ve drawn only things for themselves. After some resharpening, they quickly begin drawing houses, hospitals, and schools for people who need them. With the pencil’s stub, Margarita draws lots of hearts so that “everyone would love one another, even if they were different, from different countries, of different skin colors ….People with two moms or two dads.” While a little didactic, the story, translated from Spanish, raises thought-provoking questions: What would a reader do if they received a magic pencil? The book’s illustrations make inspired use of collage, mixing cartoonish images of the children with photos of cats, fences, a lawn, and more. Margarita has light skin, blond hair, and blue eyes, while Daniel and Charlie have brown skin and black hair. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Though preachy, this simple, creatively illustrated story encourages empathy and compassion. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-84-18599-59-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: NubeOcho
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
A jam-packed opener sure to satisfy lovers of the princess genre.
Ice princess Lina must navigate family and school in this early chapter read.
The family picnic is today. This is not a typical gathering, since Lina’s maternal relatives are a royal family of Windtamers who have power over the weather and live in castles floating on clouds. Lina herself is mixed race, with black hair and a tan complexion like her Asian-presenting mother’s; her Groundling father appears to be a white human. While making a grand entrance at the castle of her grandfather, the North Wind, she fails to successfully ride a gust of wind and crashes in front of her entire family. This prompts her stern grandfather to ask that Lina move in with him so he can teach her to control her powers. Desperate to avoid this, Lina and her friend Claudia, who is black, get Lina accepted at the Hilltop Science and Arts Academy. Lina’s parents allow her to go as long as she does lessons with grandpa on Saturdays. However, fitting in at a Groundling school is rough, especially when your powers start freak winter storms! With the story unfurling in diary format, bright-pink–highlighted grayscale illustrations help move the plot along. There are slight gaps in the storytelling and the pacing is occasionally uneven, but Lina is full of spunk and promotes self-acceptance.
A jam-packed opener sure to satisfy lovers of the princess genre. (Fantasy. 5-8)Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-35393-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
A close encounter of the best kind.
Left behind when the space bus departs, a child discovers that the moon isn’t as lifeless as it looks.
While the rest of the space-suited class follows the teacher like ducklings, one laggard carrying crayons and a sketchbook sits down to draw our home planet floating overhead, falls asleep, and wakes to see the bus zooming off. The bright yellow bus, the gaggle of playful field-trippers, and even the dull gray boulders strewn over the equally dull gray lunar surface have a rounded solidity suggestive of Plasticine models in Hare’s wordless but cinematic scenes…as do the rubbery, one-eyed, dull gray creatures (think: those stress-busting dolls with ears that pop out when squeezed) that emerge from the regolith. The mutual shock lasts but a moment before the lunarians eagerly grab the proffered crayons to brighten the bland gray setting with silly designs. The creatures dive into the dust when the bus swoops back down but pop up to exchange goodbye waves with the errant child, who turns out to be an olive-skinned kid with a mop of brown hair last seen drawing one of their new friends with the one crayon—gray, of course—left in the box. Body language is expressive enough in this debut outing to make a verbal narrative superfluous.
A close encounter of the best kind. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4253-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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