Gertrude Stein’s “A rose is a rose is a rose” serves as the poetic structure for this somewhat surrealistic examination of summer’s pleasures. Two brother and sister pairs explore a variety of summertime activities: playing near a creek and a beach, attending a baseball game, visiting an amusement park at night. The short, rhyming text introduces paired elements that convey the sights and sounds and tastes of summer, from pink lemonade sipped under a tree in the heat of the day to ice-cream cones on the front porch in the evening. Though the summer activities are traditional, Blackall’s watercolor illustrations add a more modern slant, with an enormous rose as tall as a tree as the beginning and ending images. The two girls on the cover illustration are enjoying an old-fashioned swing with a wooden seat, but they are swinging higher than the kites that their brothers are flying, conveying the magical quality of childhood’s sunny summer days. (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-8050-7444-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Richly colored illustrations and lyrical text portray a girl and her family in India waiting for the monsoon season to begin. “[G]ravelly, grainy, gritty dust” blows on the wind and won’t stop until the rains come. The level of anticipation is so high that every engine rumble sounds like thunder. A koel (songbird) sings “in a voice like melting sunshine,” and heat waves “dance upon rocks and shimmer over rooftops.” Sometimes the viewpoint is angled upward to emphasize the sky’s importance. Saturated colors fill every bit of every page (there’s no white space at all), fully conveying the hot, dusty air and the sense of impatience. When the “stretching, sweeping sheet of rain” finally arrives, the girl and her brother dance joyously in the street. An expressive story about seasons, extremes, and waiting. (glossary, author’s note) (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-374-35015-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2003
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
