Bouncy, joyful, and delectable.
A retelling of a South Indian folktale about a delicious sweet with a unique name.
While playing at his friend Anya’s house, Kabir smells something scrumptious. It turns out that Anya’s father is frying up coconut-filled dumplings called kadooboo. Anya’s father sends Kabir home with some warm kadooboo, but Kabir must run back to his house before it begins to rain. On his way, he repeats the word kadooboo to himself so that he’ll know what to tell his mother. While he’s trying to remember the three-syllable word, he runs into several friends, who end up joining him: Josh, who invites Kabir to read comic books with him; Ganesh, who tells Kabir to enjoy some of the coconuts his father is harvesting; and Zara, who’s playing cricket and calls out to Kabir to duck to avoid a stray ball. As he speaks to each of them, the name of the treat gets mixed up in his head. Is it called a book-oo-doo? A duck-oo-boo? Or something else entirely? It’s not until he arrives home and the sounds of the rising storm boom outside the house that he remembers the word kadooboo—just in time to share the sumptuous food with his friends. The characters’ varying skin tones, hair textures, and names truly represent India’s diversity. The illustrations’ vibrant neon palette wonderfully complements the fanciful text, which makes generous use of onomatopoeia.
Bouncy, joyful, and delectable. (author’s note, list of South Indian words, recipe for kadooboo) (Picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781645677895
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Page Street
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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