Earnest and encouraging.
In NBA superstar Curry’s latest, a young Black girl worries that her hearing aids will prevent her from joining her new school’s soccer team.
Though Zoe’s practiced all summer, she’s nervous. What if she’s not good enough? And if she puts her hair up to play, kids will see her hearing aids. Fearing the others won’t accept her, Zoe removes her aids before a game. But playing without them proves difficult, and Zoe flees, lamenting that she’ll “never just be ordinary.” But fellow player Mila, who wears protective glasses, asks, “Who wants to be ordinary…when you can be EXTRAORDINARY!” Mila and her friends Marley and Brooklyn call Zoe’s attention to other athletes, such as a baseball player who uses a wheelchair and a runner with a prosthetic leg: “Can ordinary people do that?” Marley explains that Zoe’s dedication, and her hearing aids, make her extraordinary. Buoyed, Zoe—wearing her hearing aids—makes the team, and together they win the championship game. Author Curry appears on the last page and explains that kids must “find the courage and strength to overcome” challenges. Though it’s refreshing that Zoe’s disability isn’t her defining quality, the use of the word inspirational—a term bearing patronizing connotations for many disabled people—to describe her story risks muddying this point. Still, occasionally heavy-handed speech-balloon dialogue notwithstanding, Zoe’s teammates’ accepting attitudes are reassuring, and Bowers’ bright cartoon illustrations are engaging. Mila is pale-skinned, Brooklyn is brown-skinned, and Marley presents Asian.
Earnest and encouraging. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9780593386064
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends
Gerald the elephant learns a truth familiar to every preschooler—heck, every human: “Waiting is not easy!”
When Piggie cartwheels up to Gerald announcing that she has a surprise for him, Gerald is less than pleased to learn that the “surprise is a surprise.” Gerald pumps Piggie for information (it’s big, it’s pretty, and they can share it), but Piggie holds fast on this basic principle: Gerald will have to wait. Gerald lets out an almighty “GROAN!” Variations on this basic exchange occur throughout the day; Gerald pleads, Piggie insists they must wait; Gerald groans. As the day turns to twilight (signaled by the backgrounds that darken from mauve to gray to charcoal), Gerald gets grumpy. “WE HAVE WASTED THE WHOLE DAY!…And for WHAT!?” Piggie then gestures up to the Milky Way, which an awed Gerald acknowledges “was worth the wait.” Willems relies even more than usual on the slightest of changes in posture, layout and typography, as two waiting figures can’t help but be pretty static. At one point, Piggie assumes the lotus position, infuriating Gerald. Most amusingly, Gerald’s elephantine groans assume weighty physicality in spread-filling speech bubbles that knock Piggie to the ground. And the spectacular, photo-collaged images of the Milky Way that dwarf the two friends makes it clear that it was indeed worth the wait.
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends . (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-9957-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
A close encounter of the best kind.
Left behind when the space bus departs, a child discovers that the moon isn’t as lifeless as it looks.
While the rest of the space-suited class follows the teacher like ducklings, one laggard carrying crayons and a sketchbook sits down to draw our home planet floating overhead, falls asleep, and wakes to see the bus zooming off. The bright yellow bus, the gaggle of playful field-trippers, and even the dull gray boulders strewn over the equally dull gray lunar surface have a rounded solidity suggestive of Plasticine models in Hare’s wordless but cinematic scenes…as do the rubbery, one-eyed, dull gray creatures (think: those stress-busting dolls with ears that pop out when squeezed) that emerge from the regolith. The mutual shock lasts but a moment before the lunarians eagerly grab the proffered crayons to brighten the bland gray setting with silly designs. The creatures dive into the dust when the bus swoops back down but pop up to exchange goodbye waves with the errant child, who turns out to be an olive-skinned kid with a mop of brown hair last seen drawing one of their new friends with the one crayon—gray, of course—left in the box. Body language is expressive enough in this debut outing to make a verbal narrative superfluous.
A close encounter of the best kind. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4253-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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