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MEMORY GARDEN

Name: MEMORY GARDEN
Author: Zohreh Ghahremani
ISBN: 9781250843036

by Zohreh Ghahremani ; illustrated by Susie Ghahremani ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 27, 2024

Beautiful though potentially perplexing musings on immigration, family, and home.

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An immigrant grandmother and her grandchild sow family history alongside newly planted flowers.

Nana and the young narrator are planting a new crop of geraniums. The protagonist loves packing dirt with the yellow shovel, but nothing’s better than hearing Nana tell stories of her childhood garden “back home.” As the narrator waters and helps plant new blooms, Nana describes cypress trees that looked like soldiers, flowers that smelled like perfume, a hedgehog that, after being thrown into the water by Nana’s friend, turned out to be a good swimmer, and the family gardener, who gave her rides in a wheelbarrow. Nana pensively reminisces about her family samovar, prompting the protagonist to ask what happened to Nana’s garden. Cryptically, Nana replies, “We had to leave it…When we moved to this country, it was time to plant a whole new garden.” Though the author and illustrator both discuss their Persian heritage in the backmatter, the narrative itself never states where Nana is from or why she can’t return; children may be left confused. Still, this tale deftly invokes the delight of growing something new while preserving old memories and traditions. Amber-toned illustrations and lyrical, child-friendly text paint a poetic picture of both the present and the past. Nana and the child are tan-skinned.

Beautiful though potentially perplexing musings on immigration, family, and home. (Picture book. 3-8)

Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024

ISBN: 9781250843036

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Godwin Books

Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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CARPENTER'S HELPER

by Sybil Rosen ; illustrated by Camille Garoche ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2021

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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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)