A favorite Frost poem reveals how serendipitous choice affects a lifetime.
Robert Frost’s familiar 1915 poem presents enigmatic choices for an elementary-age boy.
A red-haired elementary-age boy trekking through golden woods with a beagle comes to a place where “two roads diverged.” Wishing he could “travel both,” the boy studies one road and then chooses the less-worn path, opting to keep the other road for “another day,” knowing he’s unlikely to “ever come back” and taking the road “less traveled by” could “make all the difference.” Richly hued illustrations in a palette of yellows and blues rely on simple rounded shapes, flat patterns, varying perspectives, and single- and double-page spreads to provide a possible context for Frost’s spare verse. Dwarfed by stylized trees resembling giant yellow toadstools, the boy begins his journey wearing a striped hoodie, blue backpack, jeans, and red boots. An impressive treetop view shows boy and beagle confronting the diverging path, emphasizing the magnitude of choice. The boy picks up fallen leaves, ponders two unknown roads, selects a leaf for his backpack, and proceeds along his chosen path. As he journeys, scenes from his ensuing life unfold, carrying him from childhood to becoming a young man with a family and eventually an elderly man, still musing about the choice he made in the woods that indeed changed everything. Inexplicably, his hair darkens from red to brown with a single page turn, which is likely to befuddle more than one reader.
A favorite Frost poem reveals how serendipitous choice affects a lifetime. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64170-107-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Familius
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift.
A paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere.
This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. Makes sense: aren’t parents and other close family members children’s first teachers? This duality suggests that the book might be best shared one-on-one between a nostalgic adult and a child who’s developed some self-confidence, having learned a thing or two from a parent, grandparent, older relative, or classroom instructor.
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943200-08-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Compendium
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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