Partner yoga: best done with a friend—and a skilled instructor.
Teachers and trained yogis will welcome the return of the diverse cast from Good Morning Yoga (2016) and Good Night Yoga (2015) to introduce playful partner yoga.
Twelve poses described in a rhyming stanza are demonstrated. Most children will recognize themselves in at least one of the 24 different child models that represent different ethnicities. In the first pose, a brown-skinned girl with a thick braid and a light-skinned boy sitting back-to-back model beginning cleansing breathes. The next spread shows a darker-skinned girl with tight pigtails and a different light-skinned boy sitting in a blossoming fruit tree and twisting while holding the same back-to-back position. Though city scenes are often in the background, each partner pair is shown in a different locale. As with much yoga instruction the text compares the positions to animals or natural phenomena. These whimsical choices will either confuse or delight children who may not be adept at metaphor. A final spread with brief instructions for use by parents or caregivers shows how young yogis can “flow” from one pose to the next, and a concluding “Mirror Me” activity, clearly for use by a teacher, is included.
Partner yoga: best done with a friend—and a skilled instructor. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62203-816-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sounds True
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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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