A good tool to help young worriers conquer their anxieties.
A little irritation grows to be a BIG problem.
It all starts when a tan-skinned child traps a Worry in their net. They decide to take it home and keep the pocket-sized purple scribble as a pet. At first, the Worry is benign. Then it becomes more annoying, getting caught in the child’s hair or tugging on their shirt. Soon the young narrator is unable to eat because of a stomachache. Meanwhile, the Worry consumes the child’s fingernails and tears, growing bigger. After the Worry hogs the covers and invades the child’s dreams, the child makes a firm decision: The Worry cannot stay. The child takes the Worry on a leash to a brown-skinned “Worry Expert,” who helps the narrator practice exercises to calm themself, like visualizing positive things, deep breathing, and moving their body. It does the trick, and the Worry soon shrinks. The central metaphor is nothing new, but the focused narrative and illustrations that look like they were created by a child are actually just right for introducing this complex mental reality to younger kids. Backmatter written by school psychologist Tammy L. Hughes points out how the protagonist makes a conscious decision to deal with the Worry, promoting “self-determination and feelings of accomplishment.” Readers will glimpse other Worries hanging on to children in the illustrations, signaling that this is a common phenomenon. The background cast is diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A good tool to help young worriers conquer their anxieties. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2023
ISBN: 9781433841958
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Magination/American Psychological Association
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
Provocative and guaranteed to spark awareness of children’s rights.
From the bold opening assertion, “I am a child with eyes, hands, a voice, a heart, and rights,” to the urgent closing plea, “We need our rights to be respected now—today,” this primer invites young readers to think about their universal rights as children as embodied in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
An engaging child narrator explains that kids have a right to: a name, a family, a country, food and water, shelter, medicines and help if their bodies don’t “work as well as other children’s.” Kids have a right to go to school, to refuse to work, to express themselves, to play and create, to be protected from disasters and wars, to be free from violence, and to breathe air “pure as the blue sky.” These rights apply to all children regardless of gender, race, size, wealth or country if they live in one of the 193 countries ratifying the Convention. Readers may be surprised, however, to discover the United States is not one of these countries. Engagingly naive acrylic illustrations spanning double-page spreads evoke Chagall in their use of flat patterns, swirling lines, vibrant hues, and symbolic, powerful dream-like images of the repertoire of children’s rights.
Provocative and guaranteed to spark awareness of children’s rights. (note on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child; list of states party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child) (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55498-149-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Trite text and overworked art detract from an interesting concept.
Each month of the year is represented by a full moon, one of its nicknames in the Northern Hemisphere, and some notes about seasonal changes during that month.
“Let me tell you a story about the moon. That bright, round moon up there is called a Full Moon….People long ago kept track of the seasons by giving each full moon a special name.” A man with light-brown skin sits with a small, dark-haired, even lighter-skinned girl in his lap, open book before them. Behind them, a stylized version of a moonlit night sets the stage for more pages of full moons. The illustrations use strong, dark lines filled in with high-contrast blocks of color. A cursory glance invites a second look; a second look brings a discomfiting sense of the uncanny, as animals, plants, and humans are generally depicted in that nether world between realism and fantasy. A double-page spread of children gathering berries by moonlight is particularly eerie. The text is also a garbled mix of poetic imagery and snippets of natural science: “Thunder and lightning storms roll through the plains, providing strength for the farmer’s crops to grow.” What does that mean? Most pages keep the full moon gender-free, but it is given a male pronoun during April—as is November’s hardworking beaver. Most problematic of all is that there is no information about the “people long ago” or the culture or cultures from which these various names originated.
Trite text and overworked art detract from an interesting concept. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-58536-965-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
© Copyright 2024 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.
