Art appreciation from the lens of royal Black childhood—beautiful!
In Freeman’s latest Princess Arabella book, this young Black princess gives her royal friends a tour of her very own museum.
Unlike the Louvre, Princess Arabella’s museum seems to attract more children than adults, features many hands-on exhibits, and displays art that relates to the princess’s family. Portraits of Princess Arabella and her mother attract the attention of her regal friends because both have blue faces. Princess Ling calls this “strange” while Prince Jonas declares it “magnificent.” Princess Naomi says she recognizes Arabella as the subject of these portraits, regardless of skin color. The Worhol-esque endpapers even foreshadow this conversation, depicting Arabella with blue, red, pink, green, purple, and orange skin. And indeed, the wonderfully stylized images of Princess Arabella’s unique hairdo, which Freeman creates with increasingly smaller unconnected circles that give the essence of five pigtails, make her unmistakable. Other museum exhibits include huge, colorful dotted pumpkins like Yayoi Kusama’s, a giant spider that recalls Louise Bourgeois’ Maman, one dog inspired by Jeff Koons and another by Keith Haring, and a portrait of her parents reminiscent of Kehinde Wiley’s portraits of the Obamas. Docent Arabella, wearing her Mondrian-inspired dress, concludes the gathering with tasty treats and enjoys the children’s excitement for making their own amazing artwork. Like the other Princess Arabella books, this one features a cast of multicultural characters from different, though unspecified, countries. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10.3-by-16.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 57.1% of actual size.)
Art appreciation from the lens of royal Black childhood—beautiful! (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-913175-06-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Cassava Republic Press
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
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
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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