A pleasant depiction of bucolic life emphasizing camaraderie and community.
Children spend the day on a farm in Ford’s rhyming picture book.
Ryder, Sky, and Emmaline enjoy completing tasks like picking veggies for lunch, tending crops, helping the “farmer pull the plow,” and more. They visit the farm’s animal residents, including cows and pigs, and have fun running around fields, playing on the swing at the pond, and creating hay mazes. After they finish their chores, the kids visit the “cool and leafy glade,” where they picture themselves in fantasy scenarios. Sky imagines gazing at underwater creatures from a submarine window, and Emmaline pretends she’s an astronaut zooming in space. When the sun sets, the kids are greeted by dogs who have come to escort them home. While many farm books are largely concept stories focusing solely on chores, Ford offers insight into teamwork and friendship as the pals work together. The rhyme scheme has a playful meter, which will keep readers interested (“Scatter chicken feed around / Dig up beets from underground”). Zhi provides colorful cartoonlike illustrations of the children, who show a diverse range of skin tones. Readers will appreciate the vibrant background scenery, like a multihued sunset.
A pleasant depiction of bucolic life emphasizing camaraderie and community.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73245-943-4
Page Count: 28
Publisher: H Bar Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Echoes of Runaway Bunny color this exchange between a bath-averse piglet and his patient mother. Using a strategy that would probably be a nonstarter in real life, the mother deflects her stubborn offspring’s string of bath-free occupational conceits with appeals to reason: “Pirates NEVER EVER take baths!” “Pirates don’t get seasick either. But you do.” “Yeesh. I’m an astronaut, okay?” “Well, it is hard to bathe in zero gravity. It’s hard to poop and pee in zero gravity too!” And so on, until Mom’s enticing promise of treasure in the deep sea persuades her little Treasure Hunter to take a dive. Chunky figures surrounded by lots of bright white space in Segal’s minimally detailed watercolors keep the visuals as simple as the plotline. The language isn’t quite as basic, though, and as it rendered entirely in dialogue—Mother Pig’s lines are italicized—adult readers will have to work hard at their vocal characterizations for it to make any sense. Moreover, younger audiences (any audiences, come to that) may wonder what the piggy’s watery closing “EUREKA!!!” is all about too. Not particularly persuasive, but this might coax a few young porkers to get their trotters into the tub. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25425-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There’s always tomorrow.
A lyrical message of perseverance and optimism.
The text uses direct address, which the title- and final-page illustrations suggest comes from an adult voice, to offer inspiration and encouragement. The opening spreads reads, “Tonight as you sleep, a new day stirs. / Each kiss good night is a wish for tomorrow,” as the accompanying art depicts a child with black hair and light skin asleep in a bed that’s fantastically situated in a stylized landscape of buildings, overpasses, and roadways. The effect is dreamlike, in contrast with the next illustration, of a child of color walking through a field and blowing dandelion fluff at sunrise. Until the last spread, each child depicted in a range of settings is solitary. Some visual metaphors falter in terms of credibility, as in the case of a white-appearing child using a wheelchair in an Antarctic ice cave strewn with obstacles, as the text reads “you’ll explore the world, only feeling lost in your imagination.” Others are oblique in attempted connections between text and art. How does a picture of a pale-skinned, black-haired child on a bridge in the rain evoke “first moments that will dance with you”? But the image of a child with pink skin and brown hair scaling a wall as text reads “there will be injustice that will challenge you, and it will surprise you how brave you can be” is clearer.
There’s always tomorrow. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-99437-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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