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ONE TODAY

Name: ONE TODAY
Author: Richard Blanco
ISBN: 978-0-316-37144-5

by Richard Blanco ; illustrated by Dav Pilkey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 3, 2015

When it was read, the poem was instantly acclaimed; Pilkey’s visual interpretation fully—and joyfully—honors it.

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The creator of Captain Underpants returns to the painterly style of his Caldecott honor book, Paperboy (1996), to illustrate Blanco’s poem, written for President Barack Obama’s second inauguration.

Pilkey chooses a landscape orientation to capture the poem’s sea-to-shining-sea epic sweep, giving readers three characters—a pigtailed black girl, a red-capped white boy, and a black cat—to follow through the titular day. They leave their house as the sun rises, wander benign city streets and play in parks while their mother works, then pick her up at the end of the day to return home in “the plum blush of dusk.” He doesn’t confine himself to simply mirroring the poem’s abundant visual images, instead adopting a kaleidoscopic approach that uses the sun’s diagonal rays to control compositions. Some double-page spreads are multiply fractured, capturing the nation’s busyness, while others are solemn and contemplative, as in a low-angle, blue-dominated image of the children from waist down that accompanies the lines commemorating “the empty desks of twenty children marked absent / today, and forever.” Trucks, school buses, and bridges form visual leitmotifs; a saturated, pastel palette modulates with the poem’s moods; cityscapes are made welcoming with softly rounded horizon lines; the seasons change with the text of the poem across this “one today,” taking readers from spring to winter.

When it was read, the poem was instantly acclaimed; Pilkey’s visual interpretation fully—and joyfully—honors it. (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-316-37144-5

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015

Categories:

CHILDREN'S POETRY

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TOMORROW IS WAITING

by Kiley Frank ; illustrated by Aaron Meshon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 8, 2019

There’s always tomorrow.

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A lyrical message of perseverance and optimism.

The text uses direct address, which the title- and final-page illustrations suggest comes from an adult voice, to offer inspiration and encouragement. The opening spreads reads, “Tonight as you sleep, a new day stirs. / Each kiss good night is a wish for tomorrow,” as the accompanying art depicts a child with black hair and light skin asleep in a bed that’s fantastically situated in a stylized landscape of buildings, overpasses, and roadways. The effect is dreamlike, in contrast with the next illustration, of a child of color walking through a field and blowing dandelion fluff at sunrise. Until the last spread, each child depicted in a range of settings is solitary. Some visual metaphors falter in terms of credibility, as in the case of a white-appearing child using a wheelchair in an Antarctic ice cave strewn with obstacles, as the text reads “you’ll explore the world, only feeling lost in your imagination.” Others are oblique in attempted connections between text and art. How does a picture of a pale-skinned, black-haired child on a bridge in the rain evoke “first moments that will dance with you”? But the image of a child with pink skin and brown hair scaling a wall as text reads “there will be injustice that will challenge you, and it will surprise you how brave you can be” is clearer.

There’s always tomorrow. (Picture book. 4-7)

Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-101-99437-5

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Dial Books

Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018

Categories:

CHILDREN'S POETRY | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

- BOOK REVIEW
THAT ALWAYS HAPPENS SOMETIMES
by Kiley Frank ; illustrated by K-Fai Steele

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IMAGINE

by Juan Felipe Herrera ; illustrated by Lauren Castillo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 2, 2018

A lyrical coming-of-age story in picture-book form that begs to be shared.

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Former Poet Laureate Herrera encourages his young readers to imagine all they might be in his new picture book.

Herrera’s free verse tells his own story, starting as a young boy who loves the plants and animals he finds outdoors in the California fields and is then thrust into the barren, concrete city. In the city he begins to learn to read and write, learning English and discovering a love for words and the way ink flows “like tiny rivers” across the page as he applies pen to paper. Words soon become sentences, poems, lyrics, and a means of escape. This love of the word ultimately leads him to make writing his vocation and to become the first Chicano Poet Laureate of the United States, an honor Herrera received in 2015. Through this story of hardship to success, expressed in a series of conditional statements that all begin “If I,” Herrera implores his readers to “imagine what you could do.” Castillo’s ink and foam monoprint illustrations are a tender accompaniment to Herrera’s verse, the black lines of her illustrations flowing across the page in rhythm with the author’s poetry. Together this makes for a charming read-aloud for groups or a child snuggled in a lap.

A lyrical coming-of-age story in picture-book form that begs to be shared. (Picture book/memoir. 4-8)