Art meets astronomy in this visually dazzling book.
Author/illustrator Davis’ picture book tells a tale of a celestial dreamer and an artist.
Vincent is a pale-skinned little boy with red hair, dressed for adventure. In his dream, he finds himself in a new place that’s a red, dusty desert, surrounded by cliffs and rocks; he also notices that his weight feels different, and he can jump very high. Vincent paints his unique surroundings, including a cerulean sunset above an empty crater. When night falls, he looks for Earth’s moon, but all he sees among the stars are two tiny soft lights—Phobos and Deimos, the little moons of Mars. The next day, Vincent imagines Mars’ craters filled with water, and he paints a placid lake surrounded by marble mountains, a lush green garden in a crater, and fossils of flowers in an ancient rock. Davis’ full-color, painterly illustrations are truly stunning (reminiscent of Vincent Van Gogh’s work, of course), with swirling skies and softly hemispherical detail; visible brush strokes add dimension and nuance. The rhyming verse has a dreamlike quality (“the sky looked rusty, / but very profound”) and appears on every second page, so the text doesn’t interrupt the images. The book includes educational details about the red planet, including the size of its two moons.
Art meets astronomy in this visually dazzling book.Pub Date: March 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798990350809
Page Count: 35
Publisher: Artists on Planets
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees.
After Duncan finds his crayons gone—yet again—letters arrive, detailing their adventures in friendship.
Eleven crayons send missives from their chosen spots throughout Duncan’s home (and one from his classroom). Red enjoys the thrill of extinguishing “pretend fires” with Duncan’s toy firetruck. White, so often dismissed as invisible, finds a new calling subbing in for the missing queen on the black-and-white chessboard. “Now everyone ALWAYS SEES ME!…(Well, half the time!)” Pink’s living the dream as a pastry chef helming the Breezy Bake Oven, “baking everything from little cupcakes…to…OTHER little cupcakes!” Teal, who’s hitched a ride to school in Duncan’s backpack, meets the crayons in the boy’s desk and writes, “Guess what? I HAVE A TWIN! How come you never told me?” Duncan wants to see his crayons and “meet their new friends.” A culminating dinner party assembles the crayons and their many guests: a table tennis ball, dog biscuits, a well-loved teddy bear, and more. The premise—personified crayons, away and back again—is well-trammeled territory by now, after over a dozen books and spinoffs, and Jeffers once more delivers his signature cartooning and hand-lettering. Though the pages lack the laugh-out-loud sight gags and side-splittingly funny asides of previous outings, readers—especially fans of the crayons’ previous outings—will enjoy checking in on their pals.
Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780593622360
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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