As sweet and benign as a summer daisy.
A flower-to-be, looking like a green pea and behaving just like a human preschooler, voices its fears about its inevitable transformation.
There’s the dark. (“You never know / who might be digging… / …in the DARK.”) There’s the equally scary-seeming light looming above. With bona fide impediments like rocks and spiders popping up, young readers should develop real empathy for the little plant during its complex transit. A bespectacled worm offers encouragement and reassurance, flanked by ants and beetles. “There are friends to feed you, / friends to weed you, / and friends indeed who / really need you!” A series of gatefolds serves to reinforce the sense of expansiveness of soil and, later, blue sky, as the seed-turned-sprout grows into a towering, daisylike flower. Cordell uses a flat, matte color palette of browns, greens, worm-pink and sky blue, with thick black line for details. He preserves the plant’s personality throughout its growth spurt, successively using the same pale green hue and facial expressions for the seed, sprout and the flower’s center. Hood’s rhyming text is charming, but the final gatefold, a full three pages tall, must be folded away and turned before its verse can be concluded on the final spread—a slight detraction from the flow.
As sweet and benign as a summer daisy. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: March 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-5230-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A heartwarming story about facing fears and acceptance.
A boy with wings learns to be himself and inspires others like him to soar, too.
Norman, a “perfectly normal” boy, never dreamed he might grow wings. Afraid of what his parents might say, he hides his new wings under a big, stuffy coat. Although the coat hides his wings from the world, Norman no longer finds joy in bathtime, playing at the park, swimming, or birthday parties. With the gentle encouragement of his parents, who see his sadness, Norman finds the courage to come out of hiding and soar. Percival (The Magic Looking Glass, 2017, etc.) depicts Norman with light skin and dark hair. Black-and-white illustrations show his father with dark skin and hair and his mother as white. The contrast of black-and-white illustrations with splashes of bright color complements the story’s theme. While Norman tries to be “normal,” the world and people around him look black and gray, but his coat stands out in yellow. Birds pop from the page in pink, green, and blue, emphasizing the joy and beauty of flying free. The final spread, full of bright color and multiracial children in flight, sets the mood for Norman’s realization on the last page that there is “no such thing as perfectly normal,” but he can be “perfectly Norman.”
A heartwarming story about facing fears and acceptance. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68119-785-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
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