A gorgeous fable celebrating generosity and wit.
A traveler attempts to rest in the shade of a tree.
The traveler, along with several villagers, is soon driven off when the rich man who owns the land the tree sits on demands they leave his property. The traveler makes a deal with the rich man. Parting with all his money, he purchases the right to sit in the tree’s shadow wherever it may land for as long as he wants. The rich man believes he’s made some easy money, but as the day lengthens, so does the tree’s shadow, allowing the traveler to reach unexpected places. Eventually he gets the better of the rich man and finds a way to allow all the villagers to share in his happiness. Abstract backgrounds and characters presented as silhouettes meld with the narrative, a retelling of a Korean folktale, to create a fairy tale–like mood. The eponymous tree features in nearly every illustration, and clever layouts and a dramatic gatefold demonstrate the true extent of its shade as the day goes on, making for a stunning dusk scene as the traveler literally dances along the shadow’s length. The soothing cadence of the story paired with the simple but beautiful illustrations and amusing ending make for a calming and satisfying read, translated from Korean and reformatted for a North American audience. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gorgeous fable celebrating generosity and wit. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2023
ISBN: 9781778400186
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Aldana Libros/Greystone Kids
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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
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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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