Sidesplitting fun throughout for one or a crowd.
A hefty gathering of versified reflections on topics from “dadding” to what the Nail-Clipping Fairy brings at night.
Pitched as the companion to I’m Just No Good at Rhyming (2017) but with artwork from Tsurumi rather than Lane Smith, Harris’ latest collection focuses on parenting, growing up, and like domestic themes. Along with parental revelations (“Secretly, we do the things we tell you not to do! / We leave our dirty clothes out, and we pick our noses, too”) and efforts to recall “My Very First Memory,” he explains that “The Place Where the Lost Things Go” is right here, extolls the virtues of “A Big, Comfy Chair and a Brand-New Book,” and gleefully reassures children that even in the dark they’re never all alone, because…“there are monsters!” Like Smith in the previous volume, Tsurumi plays a maverick role. In addition to a racially diverse cast of wide-eyed youngsters and grown-ups, they depict a set of animal critics regarding a villanelle with disgust and, in the wake of a warning on an early page, a meteor that plunges down later to annihilate an unfortunate poem. Though the adult perspectives and high page count make this a marathon run, protestations notwithstanding, the author is still just fine at rhyming, and that, not to mention his free-wheeling sense of humor, will keep young audiences reading all the way to the (rhymed!) glossary and into the goofy title and subject indexes.
Sidesplitting fun throughout for one or a crowd. (Poetry. 6-10)Pub Date: July 18, 2023
ISBN: 9780316592598
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
No substitute for blankets or shelter, but perhaps a way of securing some warmth for those in need.
Gaiman’s free-verse meditation on coming in from, or at least temporarily fending off, the cold is accompanied by artwork from 13 illustrators.
An ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the author put out a social media appeal in 2019 asking people about their memories of warmth; the result is this picture book, whose proceeds will go to the UNHCR. For many refugees and other displaced persons, Gaiman writes, “food and friends, / home, a bed, even a blanket, / become just memories.” Here he gathers images that signify warmth, from waking in a bed “burrowed beneath blankets / and comforters” to simply holding a baked potato or being offered a scarf. Using palettes limited to black and the warm orange in which most of the text is printed, an international slate of illustrators give these images visual form, and 12 of the 13 add comments about their intentions or responses. The war in Ukraine is on the minds of Pam Smy and Bagram Ibatoulline, while Majid Adin recalls his time as a refugee in France’s “Calais jungle” camp. “You have the right to be here,” the poet concludes, which may give some comfort to those facing the cold winds of public opinion in too many of the places where refugees fetch up. The characters depicted are diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
No substitute for blankets or shelter, but perhaps a way of securing some warmth for those in need. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063358089
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
A luminous call to think about what is and to envision what might be.
In U.S. Poet Laureate Limón’s debut picture book, soaring images and lyrics invite contemplation of life’s wonders—on Earth and perhaps, tantalizingly, elsewhere.
“O second moon,” writes Limón, “we, too, are made / of water, // of vast and beckoning seas.” In visual responses to a poem that will be carried by NASA’s Europa Clipper, a probe scheduled for launch in October 2024 and designed to check Jupiter’s ice-covered ocean moon for possible signs of life, Sís offers flowing glimpses of earthly birds and whales, of heavenly bodies lit with benevolent smiles, and a small light-skinned space traveler flying between worlds in a vessel held aloft by a giant book. Following the undulations of the poet’s cadence, falling raindrops give way to shimmering splashes, then to a climactic fiery vision reminiscent of Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night before finishing with mirrored human figures made of stars. Visual images evocative of the tree of life presage what Límon writes in her afterword: that her poem is as much about “our own precious planet” as it is about what may lie in wait for us to discover on others. “We, too, are made of wonders, of great / and ordinary loves, // of small invisible worlds, // of a need to call out through the dark.”
A luminous call to think about what is and to envision what might be. (Picture book. 7-10)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781324054009
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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