A charming and creative take on adapting to life with anxiety.
The diminutive hero introduced in Small Knight and the Angry Prince (2023) returns for a more personal adventure.
Pale-skinned, brave Small Knight (who uses they/them pronouns) and their trusted companion, Tiny Bear (plush but seemingly sentient), explore a cave aglow with shining crystals but wind up falling asleep. Some taller knights bring the little human back to the palace, where the queen is waiting, but where is Tiny Bear? As Small Knight frets, a jar breaks, and the Anxiety Monster (captured offscreen at the beginning of the book) emerges. Small Knight stands up to the monster, depicted as coalesced ink scribbles with horns. But as Small Knight unsuccessfully looks for Tiny Bear, their fears mount and the monster grows. The child decides to search the cave and commands the beast to accompany them. But the Anxiety Monster begins to worry, too, and Small Knight reassures it. This back-and-forth defines the youngster’s relationship to the monster and to anxiety itself—at times it can be overcome, but sometimes it’s in control. When all are safe again, the Anxiety Monster shrinks, and Small Knight finds a cozier yet still secure home for it. In the author’s note, Kasha discusses the challenges of coping with anxiety. Accompanied by quaint, atmospherically fantastical watercolor-and-ink illustrations, her story offers an accessible depiction of doing so, which many readers will find validating. Small Knight and the queen are light-skinned; the other knights are darker-skinned.
A charming and creative take on adapting to life with anxiety. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250856999
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Safe to creep on by.
Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.
In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.
Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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