The book has its heart in the right place, but its mind is too clearly focused on adult agendas and preoccupations.
Barnes’ earnest, rather oblique text interrogating the use of colors as labels for people is at odds with its playful, naive collage art.
The clunky opening line reads, “I’m just a kid coloring the world in the pictures I drew. I look in my crayon box to see which one I’d be…I wonder if kids are colors too,” propelling readers into a lengthy rumination on whether elements of the natural world “see” a child as a color. “Am I a color to the sky? Am I a color in my dreams? Am I a color to the moon? Am I a color to the sea?” The ideological slant declares color an inadequate and limiting description or category for a human being. While a laudable message, it seems a rather abstract one for the intended child audience, though Nelson’s accompanying, playful and, yes, colorful, collage illustrations seem much more in tune with young children’s sensibilities. This title doesn’t measure up to other more developmentally appropriate titles prompting discussion about race, ethnicity and diversity. Let's Talk about Race, by Julius Lester and illustrated by Karen Barbour (2005), and The Skin You Live in, by Michael Tyler and illustrated by David Lee Csicsko (2005), are just two of these.
The book has its heart in the right place, but its mind is too clearly focused on adult agendas and preoccupations. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58536-541-8
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
Decidedly one-trick yet inspired and prettily designed.
Coppo adapts a 17th-century Italian magic trick for her latest meta excursion.
Tuxedoed Lady Rabbit welcomes her audience, acknowledging that wow-level magic is difficult to pull off in a book. Making something appear as if out of nowhere…well, “any book can do that!” But the titular claim bears out in cleverly designed pages. First, readers are told to scan a page of audience members (36 charmingly unique denizens arrayed in six rows) and to choose one member. Lady Rabbit then asks kids to identify the row of their seated pick by turning to a specific page. Uh-oh! Every audience member has changed seats! Again directed to a particular page based on their choice’s new row, readers will discover that Lady Rabbit has guessed their pick. All nine answer pages include the characters and the instruction: “I guessed it, didn’t I? Now go to page 39.” There, with a “TA-DA!” and a bow, the white rabbit invites kids to turn back to pages 12-13 to try again. Coppa’s finely inked floral borders and decorated proscenium arch, colored in black and white and muted greens and salmon, emanate a vintage feel. Kids will warm to amusing audience members such as Shroom, Yeti, and Unknown (a smiling question mark) and will delight in the various mini-creatures adorning each page. One downside of the trick’s interactivity: The six pages that redirect readers to the solution pages are visually identical.
Decidedly one-trick yet inspired and prettily designed. (historical note) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781797229010
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
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