An odd little story, but a fresh example of Bruna’s work for a contemporary audience.
This reissue of a 1959 title misses an opportunity to improve upon the translated text’s lackluster story but will acquaint contemporary readers with the Dutch Bruna’s modernist style.
Although smiling broadly on the cover art, the eponymous apple is sad, as it cannot walk like the beetle that crawls on its leaf and cannot see the world around it from its low vantage point. A compassionate weather-vane rooster offers to help at night. The text says that “once the sky had turned quite black,” the rooster swoops down to carry the apple up to the sky, but the background remains blue at this point, and it’s rather odd that the apple can now see a butterfly, a house and then inside the house to a plate of grapes and a table setting if the night is indeed “quite black.” Of course, apples can’t cry or talk, and weather-vane roosters can’t fly about as tour guides, either, so maybe this is just a case for artistic license and the suspension of disbelief. The cheery palette and simple forms characteristic of Bruna’s work in his better-known titles about Miffy the bunny are inviting, and the circular structure of the tale, returning the apple to its place on the ground, is satisfying.
An odd little story, but a fresh example of Bruna’s work for a contemporary audience. (Picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-84976-214-4
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Tate Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
The joys of counting combine with pretty art and homage to Goodnight Moon.
This bedtime book offers simple rhymes, celebrates the numbers one through 10, and encourages the counting of objects.
Each double-page spread shows a different toddler-and-caregiver pair, with careful attention to different skin tones, hair types, genders, and eye shapes. The pastel palette and soft, rounded contours of people and things add to the sleepy litany of the poems, beginning with “Goodnight, one fork. / Goodnight, one spoon. / Goodnight, one bowl. / I’ll see you soon.” With each number comes a different part in a toddler’s evening routine, including dinner, putting away toys, bathtime, and a bedtime story. The white backgrounds of the pages help to emphasize the bold representations of the numbers in both written and numerical forms. Each spread gives multiple opportunities to practice counting to its particular number; for example, the page for “four” includes four bottles of shampoo and four inlaid dots on a stool—beyond the four objects mentioned in the accompanying rhyme. Each home’s décor, and the array and types of toys and accoutrements within, shows a decidedly upscale, Western milieu. This seems compatible with the patronizing author’s note to adults, which accuses “the media” of indoctrinating children with fear of math “in our country.” Regardless, this sweet treatment of numbers and counting may be good prophylaxis against math phobia.
The joys of counting combine with pretty art and homage to Goodnight Moon. (Picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-93378-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
The slightly didactic message of tolerance and inclusiveness is made palatable by the gardening analogy, and this book will...
This attractive picture book for the very young from accomplished illustrator and debut author Gillingham explores a thoughtful analogy between gardening and friendship.
The parallels between growing things and making new friends are illustrated with simple instructions, matched with Gillingham’s pastel-shaded woodcut-and-collaged illustrations. Just like seeds and plants, friendships need to be sown, tended and cultivated. “A friend needs water… / warm sunshine… // and space to bloom.” It is a two-way process: “To grow a friend, talk / and listen”; “Good friends stand by each other in rain / or shine.” With friendships, as with flowers, things can go wrong: “Sometimes a friend bugs you.” (Bugs literally buzz around their heads on a page where the friends are wrestling for control of a potted plant.) But “[t]o grow a friend, / chase the bugs away together!” The girl finds a solution to their argument by giving the boy a ride in a wheelbarrow. A subtly diverse selection of kids and adults are portrayed enjoying one another’s company and working together to cultivate their gardens. Children, flowers, birds, trees and seasons are skillfully illustrated using multicolored patterns and shapes that will have considerable visual appeal for preschoolers.
The slightly didactic message of tolerance and inclusiveness is made palatable by the gardening analogy, and this book will encourage young friendships to bloom. (Picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-37669-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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