Originally published in Spain, this amorphous volume could certainly be used as a jumping-off point by a creative adult, but...
Imagination is an elusive concept, and this book misses the boat in its attempt to deconstruct one girl's creative process.
The nameless child tries to describe how her mind works as she explores the world of her imagination, entering it quite literally through a door and seeing legendary characters: “unicorns, fairies, elves and magicians.” Then she proceeds to use a series of similes: “My imagination is like a sea of thoughts that float and glide over each other.” “My imagination is like a land of clouds of different shapes.” Since she starts by discussing story and writing, a segue to letters and words makes sense, but this is a limited view of imagination and creativity. She includes one reference to music but none to scientific creativity or the visual arts. Light bulbs and gears appear as clichéd images inside her mind. Illustrations mix watercolor and drawing and sometimes have a diagrammatic look. The limited palette is quite sophisticated, as is some language. As the text ends, the narrator speaks about what happens after her words hold hands: “And they cross the bridge of my imagination that connects my worlds: the internal and the external.”
Originally published in Spain, this amorphous volume could certainly be used as a jumping-off point by a creative adult, but there are far better books on the topic available. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-84-15503-59-0
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Cuento de Luz
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some...
With a little help from his audience, a young storyteller gets over a solid case of writer’s block in this engaging debut.
Despite the (sometimes creatively spelled) examples produced by all his classmates and the teacher’s assertion that “Stories are everywhere!” Ralph can’t get past putting his name at the top of his paper. One day, lying under the desk in despair, he remembers finding an inchworm in the park. That’s all he has, though, until his classmates’ questions—“Did it feel squishy?” “Did your mom let you keep it?” “Did you name it?”—open the floodgates for a rousing yarn featuring an interloping toddler, a broad comic turn and a dramatic rescue. Hanlon illustrates the episode with childlike scenes done in transparent colors, featuring friendly-looking children with big smiles and widely spaced button eyes. The narrative text is printed in standard type, but the children’s dialogue is rendered in hand-lettered printing within speech balloons. The episode is enhanced with a page of elementary writing tips and the tantalizing titles of his many subsequent stories (“When I Ate Too Much Spaghetti,” “The Scariest Hamster,” “When the Librarian Yelled Really Loud at Me,” etc.) on the back endpapers.
An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some budding young writers off and running. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0761461807
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Amazon Children's Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated...
The master of the manic patterned tale offers a newly buffed version of his first published book, with appropriately gloppy new illustrations.
Like the previous four iterations (orig. 1979; revised 2004, 2006, 2009), the plot remains intact through minor changes in wording: Each time young Jule Ann ventures outside in clean clothes, a nefarious mud puddle leaps out of a tree or off the roof to get her “completely all over muddy” and necessitate a vigorous parental scrubbing. Petricic gives the amorphous mud monster a particularly tarry look and texture in his scribbly, high-energy cartoon scenes. It's a formidable opponent, but the two bars of smelly soap that the resourceful child at last chucks at her attacker splatter it over the page and send it sputtering into permanent retreat.
Score one for cleanliness. Like (almost) all Munsch, funny as it stands but even better read aloud, with lots of exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-427-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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