The design is the thing in this celebration of the activities of an African-American family, by the illustrator of Karen English's Neeny Coming, Neeny Going (1995). A mother and father and their twin girls are shown sleeping late, having a pancake breakfast, and reading the Sunday paper while a contented cat sits close by. They meet the grandparents at church and ride the subway together to their home, ``listening to stories, remembering good times, helping Grandma fix supper.'' The acrylic paintings represent people and objects as massive blocks of color, with no faces and mostly still poses. The effect is of poster art, stylized representation intended for a large format and great graphic impact. The technique is skilled, as in a tableau of a minister at the pulpit, before stained glass windows; or, at its most animated, a scene of the choir director lifting her arms joyously as a sea of faceless singers looks up to the heavens. Very young members of the picture-book set may want to connect more directly with the people pictured and grow weary of the facelessness, but older children will find the bold use of color and shapes appealing. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8075-7658-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
Dedicated “to children everywhere sitting in cardboard boxes,” this elemental debut depicts a bunny with big, looping ears demonstrating to a rather thick, unseen questioner (“Are you still standing around in that box?”) that what might look like an ordinary carton is actually a race car, a mountain, a burning building, a spaceship or anything else the imagination might dream up. Portis pairs each question and increasingly emphatic response with a playscape of Crockett Johnson–style simplicity, digitally drawn with single red and black lines against generally pale color fields. Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina Russo’s Big Brown Box (2000) or Dana Kessimakis Smith’s Brave Spaceboy (2005). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-112322-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
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