Much good to see here.
Warm guidance on the difference between looking and seeing.
Verde is well established as a writer skilled at introducing concepts of mindfulness to young readers, with titles such as those in the I Am series, illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds, to her credit. With this latest offering, she collaborates with illustrator Perdomo to invite children to “slow down— / find stillness, and notice / with patience and curiosity.” First-person narration delivers this invitation in the voice of a child who presents Black. The young narrator first distinguishes between looking at a tree and truly seeing the life it experiences and sustains—“Signs of change and letting go, / flowering and feeding, / shading and sheltering. / A place to call home.” The narrator then directly asks readers what they see in the accompanying, brightly colored illustration of flora and fauna alike in an up-close image of the tree’s branches. The following pages continue in this manner, helping readers “see” both tangible and intangible qualities of the world they inhabit, with illustrations echoing illustrator Karen Katz’s style and expanding on the text to prompt careful examination. While the book is engaging, some may notice a missed opportunity for inclusion of visually impaired people, who, while unable to literally look at the world, can surely perceive a great deal in other ways. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Much good to see here. (Picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781419761638
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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