A visual, day-in-the-life adventure that can be used to stimulate literacy-rich conversations with children.
Superheroes can come in all shapes and sizes.
In this Canadian import, Saya, a toddler with big dark eyes and dark hair, is heading to the park with her dad on a sunny day. Pushed along the sidewalk in her stroller, she sees two cats squabbling and flings her stuffed bunny, Kunoichi (a Japanese word meaning female ninja), toward them, dissolving the feline conflict. Readers soon see that Saya and Kunoichi are a covert superhero team. Over the course of the day’s outing, they stop another toddler’s stroller from rolling away on the bumpy bus ride, rescue a duckling who’s fallen through a sewer grate, and deflect a baseball before it hits a White child at the playground. Dad, utterly unaware of the heroics transpiring right under his nose, patiently retrieves the plush toy time and time again en route to the story’s sweet ending. Children will appreciate the compelling graphic format of this wordless picture book. The illustrations are rendered in a muted palette, and inset panels and splash pages are used to good effect, adding drama and focusing the reader’s attention on Saya’s and Dad’s emotional responses. The story will resonate with young readers who believe their stuffies, too, can save the world. The main characters present as Japanese Canadian. Background characters are diverse and include a woman wearing a hijab.
A visual, day-in-the-life adventure that can be used to stimulate literacy-rich conversations with children. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4598-2780-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
Sweet.
A caregiving bear shares with its cub how love has defined their relationship from the first moment and through the years as the cub has grown.
With rhymes and a steady rhythm that are less singsong-y than similar books, Stansbie seems to have hit a sweet spot for this offering on the I-love-you-always shelf. Readers follow the adult and child as they share special moments together—a sunset, a splash in a pond, climbing a tree, a snuggle—and the adult tells the child that the love it feels has only grown. Stansbie also takes care not to put promises in the adult bear’s mouth that can’t be delivered, acknowledging that physical proximity is not always possible: “Wherever you are, / even when we’re apart… // I’ll love you forever / with all of my heart.” The large trim size helps the sweet illustrations shine; their emphasis is on the close relationship between parent and child. Shaped peekaboo windows offer glimpses of preceding and succeeding pages, images and text carefully placed to work whatever the context. While the die cuts on the interior pages will not hold up to rough handling, they do add whimsy and delight to the book as a whole: “And now that you’re bigger, / you make my heart sing. / My / beautiful / wonderful / magical / thing.” Those last three adjectives are positioned in leaf-shaped cutouts, the turn of the page revealing the roly-poly cub in a pile of leaves, three formed by the die-cuts. Opposite, three vignettes show the cub appreciating the “beautiful,” the “wonderful,” and the “magical.”
Sweet. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68412-910-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Silver Dolphin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
If Black Lives Matter, they deserve more specificity than this.
A lushly illustrated picture book with a troubling message.
Little Lala walks with her father after his successful day of fishing. When Mama calls her home for bed, a host of “good night”s delays her: to the bird, the monkey, and even the rock. As Lala wanders through her village in the darkening twilight, readers appreciate its expansive beauty and Lala’s simple joys. Although it’s been artfully written and richly illustrated by an award-winning author of many multicultural stories, this book has problems that overshadow its beauty. “African veld” sets the story in southern Africa, but its vague locale encourages Americans to think that distinctions among African countries don’t matter. Lala wears braids or locks that stick straight up, recalling the 19th-century pickaninny, and her inconsistent skin color ranges from deep ebony like her father’s to light brown. Shadows may cause some of these differences, but if it weren’t for her identifiable hair, readers might wonder if the same child wanders from page to page. Perhaps most striking of all is Lala’s bedtime story: not an African tale but an American classic. While this might evoke nostalgia in some readers, it also suggests that southern Africa has no comparably great bedtime books for Lala, perhaps in part because American children’s literature dominates the world market.
If Black Lives Matter, they deserve more specificity than this. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-17384-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
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