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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An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education.
A young visionary describes his ideal school: “Perfectly planned and impeccably clean. / On a scale, 1 to 10, it’s more like 15!”
In keeping with the self-indulgently fanciful lines of If I Built a Car (2005) and If I Built a House (2012), young Jack outlines in Seussian rhyme a shiny, bright, futuristic facility in which students are swept to open-roofed classes in clear tubes, there are no tests but lots of field trips, and art, music, and science are afterthoughts next to the huge and awesome gym, playground, and lunchroom. A robot and lots of cute puppies (including one in a wheeled cart) greet students at the door, robotically made-to-order lunches range from “PB & jelly to squid, lightly seared,” and the library’s books are all animated popups rather than the “everyday regular” sorts. There are no guards to be seen in the spacious hallways—hardly any adults at all, come to that—and the sparse coed student body features light- and dark-skinned figures in roughly equal numbers, a few with Asian features, and one in a wheelchair. Aside from the lack of restrooms, it seems an idyllic environment—at least for dog-loving children who prefer sports and play over quieter pursuits.
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55291-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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