A fine topic with compelling collage, hampered by poor verse.
While making a drawing, a girl adapts mistakes into new subject matter.
This first-person narrator sets out to create “a picture that’s perfect in every way.” Perfection, however, is elusive. Coloring inside the lines is hard, and when results vary from what she intended, she’s upset. She solves this, each time, by changing her content to match the new lines. The theme of flexibility is encouraging. Her subject matter progresses from “a girl who’s clean and neat”—a boring start—to a piano, a horse with pockets who gallop-flies through a land of desserts, and a pirate ship. Gordon-Noy’s mixed-media illustrations use pencil, paint, and marker over a dynamic layering of papers: lined notebook paper, graph paper, doilies, photos, and paper with music scales and notes. Some papers are crumpled; some have an off-white wash over them. The artist/protagonist is drawn in the same style as everything else, making the character one with her art. The fatal flaw is the verse. Rhymes are missed (dreams/cream; around/down), description stilted (“She is having so much fun”), and scansion uneven (“That makes me so mad! Why can’t I stay in the lines? / Should I rip up this picture and begin one more time?”). Oddly, the girl seems more concerned with coloring within the lines that she herself has drawn than with drawing representationally, which feels developmentally off.
A fine topic with compelling collage, hampered by poor verse. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8028-5453-7
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift.
A paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere.
This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. Makes sense: aren’t parents and other close family members children’s first teachers? This duality suggests that the book might be best shared one-on-one between a nostalgic adult and a child who’s developed some self-confidence, having learned a thing or two from a parent, grandparent, older relative, or classroom instructor.
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943200-08-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Compendium
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
Pedestrian.
Mr. Brown can’t help with farm chores because his shoes are missing—a common occurrence in his household and likely in many readers’ as well.
Children will be delighted that the titular Mr. Brown is in fact a child. After Mr. Brown looks in his closet and sorts through his other family members’ shoes with no luck, his father and his siblings help him search the farm. Eventually—after colorful pages that enable readers to spot footwear hiding—the family gives up on their hunt, and Mr. Brown asks to be carried around for the chores. He rides on his father’s shoulders as Papa gets his work done, as seen on a double-page spread of vignettes. The resolution is more of a lesson for the adult readers than for children, a saccharine moment where father and son express their joy that the missing shoes gave them the opportunity for togetherness—with advice for other parents to appreciate those fleeting moments themselves. Though the art is bright and cheerful, taking advantage of the setting, it occasionally is misaligned with the text (for example, the text states that Mr. Brown is wearing his favorite green shirt while the illustration is of a shirt with wide stripes of white and teal blue, which could confuse readers at the point where they’re trying to figure out which family member is Mr. Brown). The family is light-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Pedestrian. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-5460-0389-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: WorthyKids/Ideals
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
