A warm celebration of both small farms and the idea that it takes a village to feed a child.
A simple poem thanking the people who grow, transport, sell and prepare our food is transformed by Azarian’s bright woodcuts.
Upon a verdant, wood-bordered field sits the proverbial groaning board, replete with tablecloth and candles; seated around it are people of diverse ages, genders and ethnicities. This opening image effectively sets the stage with its pleasing composition, exciting patterns and exquisite details. Awkwardly laid out under this strong opening, spread-spanning illustration is the prosaic but certainly accessible-to-all introduction: “As we sit around this table / let’s give thanks as we are able / to all the folks we’ll never meet / who helped provide this food we eat.” The text is set along white borders of both single- and double-paged artwork. It’s essentially a secular grace chanted beneath furrowed fields, glistening seas and a harvest scene that includes a worker with an “Eat more kale” T-shirt. Old and young, men and women alike roll up their sleeves and get to work without regard to typical gender roles. Eggs, milk and honey are gently collected, sows eat, and cattle graze; in keeping with the reverential mood, only butchers are absent from the list of workers. One thoughtful sentence stands out: “Thank the ones who bought this food, / the ones who teach me gratitude.”
A warm celebration of both small farms and the idea that it takes a village to feed a child. (Picture book. 2-6)Pub Date: May 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-88448-352-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tilbury House
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender...
A polar-bear parent speaks poetically of love for a child.
A genderless adult and cub travel through the landscapes of an arctic year. Each of the softly rendered double-page paintings has a very different feel and color palette as the pair go through the seasons, walking through wintry ice and snow and green summer meadows, cavorting in the blue ocean, watching whales, and playing beside musk oxen. The rhymes of the four-line stanzas are not forced, as is the case too often in picture books of this type: “When cold, winter winds / blow the leaves far and wide, / You’ll cross the great icebergs / with me by your side.” On a dark, snowy night, the loving parent says: “But for now, cuddle close / while the stars softly shine. // I’ll always be yours, / and you’ll always be mine.” As the last illustration shows the pair curled up for sleep, young listeners will be lulled to sweet dreams by the calm tenor of the pictures and the words. While far from original, this timeless theme is always in demand, and the combination of delightful illustrations and poetry that scans well make this a good choice for early-childhood classrooms, public libraries, and one-on-one home read-alouds.
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender restrictions. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68010-070-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Like its subject: full of bustling life yet peaceful.
Life buzzes in a community garden.
Surrounded by apartment buildings, this city garden gets plenty of human attention, but the book’s stars are the plants and insects. The opening spread shows a black child in a striped shirt sitting in a top-story window; the nearby trees and garden below reveal the beginnings of greenery that signal springtime. From that high-up view, the garden looks quiet—but it’s not. “Sleepy slugs / and garden snails / leave behind their silver trails. / Frantic teams of busy ants / scramble up the stems of plants”; and “In the earth / a single seed / sits beside a millipede. / Worms and termites / dig and toil / moving through the garden soil.” Sicuro zooms in too, showing a robin taller than a half-page; later, close-ups foreground flowers, leaves, and bugs while people (children and adults, a multiracial group) are crucial but secondary, sometimes visible only as feet. Watercolor illustrations with ink and charcoal highlights create a soft, warm, horticulturally damp environment. Scale and perspective are more stylized than literal. McCanna’s superb scansion never misses, incorporating lists of insects and plants (“Lacewings, gnats, / mosquitos, spiders, / dragonflies, and water striders / live among the cattail reeds, / lily pads, and waterweeds”) with description (“Sunlight warms the morning air. / Dewdrops shimmer / here and there”). Readers see more than gardeners do, such as rabbits stealing carrots and lettuce from garden boxes.
Like its subject: full of bustling life yet peaceful. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1797-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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