A cautionary tale for our automating times.
Two hundred years from now, young Arno gets bossed around by his personal, wearable MiniMachine automaton. Until he doesn’t.
Everything is regulated in Chwast’s futuristic tale. Arno wakes up in his bed in Happy Family Complex Number 88, just one of 5,183 families living in the bubble-domed, fully automated complex. His personal MiniMachine barks commands at him. “Get up.” “Put on your tan jumpsuit.” (All the boys wear tan jumpsuits; girls wear blue tops and red jumpers.) “Wait for the school jet,” which in Chwast’s stylized, highly entertaining cartoon artwork looks like a helicopter made out of a shoe box—hokey futurism. At school, the robot teacher takes the racially diverse class (Arno is white) on a field trip to the Zoo Garden, where one display is our current age, when “there were many kinds of animals and trees and flowers all over the world.” Arno is smitten by a bird (conveniently labeled) and sneaks it under his cap. Meanwhile, Arno’s MiniMachine continue to make demands: “Play baseball with your friends”—but Arno remembers the bird, which has hurt its wing, so Arno brings it home and cares for it. Arno ignores his MiniMachine until it blows a fuse and Arno is able to enjoy bird song instead. The social commentary is plain as day; whether kids are able to overlook the Jetsons-style doodads to see it is another matter.
A cautionary tale for our automating times. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-60980-879-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Triangle Square Books for Young Readers
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
A jam-packed opener sure to satisfy lovers of the princess genre.
Ice princess Lina must navigate family and school in this early chapter read.
The family picnic is today. This is not a typical gathering, since Lina’s maternal relatives are a royal family of Windtamers who have power over the weather and live in castles floating on clouds. Lina herself is mixed race, with black hair and a tan complexion like her Asian-presenting mother’s; her Groundling father appears to be a white human. While making a grand entrance at the castle of her grandfather, the North Wind, she fails to successfully ride a gust of wind and crashes in front of her entire family. This prompts her stern grandfather to ask that Lina move in with him so he can teach her to control her powers. Desperate to avoid this, Lina and her friend Claudia, who is black, get Lina accepted at the Hilltop Science and Arts Academy. Lina’s parents allow her to go as long as she does lessons with grandpa on Saturdays. However, fitting in at a Groundling school is rough, especially when your powers start freak winter storms! With the story unfurling in diary format, bright-pink–highlighted grayscale illustrations help move the plot along. There are slight gaps in the storytelling and the pacing is occasionally uneven, but Lina is full of spunk and promotes self-acceptance.
A jam-packed opener sure to satisfy lovers of the princess genre. (Fantasy. 5-8)Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-35393-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard.
A grouchy sapling on a Christmas tree farm finds that there are better things than lights and decorations for its branches.
A Grinch among the other trees on the farm is determined never to become a sappy Christmas tree—and never to leave its spot. Its determination makes it so: It grows gnarled and twisted and needle-less. As time passes, the farm is swallowed by the suburbs. The neighborhood kids dare one another to climb the scary, grumpy-looking tree, and soon, they are using its branches for their imaginative play, the tree serving as a pirate ship, a fort, a spaceship, and a dragon. But in winter, the tree stands alone and feels bereft and lonely for the first time ever, and it can’t look away from the decorated tree inside the house next to its lot. When some parents threaten to cut the “horrible” tree down, the tree thinks, “Not now that my limbs are full of happy children,” showing how far it has come. Happily for the tree, the children won’t give up so easily, and though the tree never wished to become a Christmas tree, it’s perfectly content being a “trick or tree.” Martinez’s digital illustrations play up the humorous dichotomy between the happy, aspiring Christmas trees (and their shoppers) and the grumpy tree, and the diverse humans are satisfyingly expressive.
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7335-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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