When Sergio of San Juan, Puerto Rico, hears a storm is coming, he hopes it will be a hurricane. This appealing picture book demonstrates that even this wildest of storms can make warm family memories as it combines useful information while presenting a charming story. The artist keeps the gouache illustrations upbeat with clean, white spaces, delicate lines, and cheerful reds and yellows used in almost every painting. The storm is dramatic and stylized with washing green waves frosted with foam, and driving rain shown as diagonal blue lines hatching the entire picture. The author ably captures the voice of Sergio, a child too young to remember the devastation of a past hurricane, who views the coming storm as an exciting adventure. He trails after the grown-ups as they tape up windows, purchase emergency supplies, and cut the coconuts off the palm trees. Later, when rain drums on the roof, waves as tall as hills slam into the seawall across the street, and the hurricane gets wilder, Sergio gets scared and crawls into bed with Mom and Dad, and they tell stories of storms past. When the storm is over, the sun shines and the sea is calm, but there is a lot of damage to clean up: smashed furniture, uprooted trees, flooded streets, downed power lines, and clogged drainage pipes. The family works together without complaint to set things right. They are even cheerful about taking a shower in the rain to conserve water. The whole family is shown, tastefully concealed by palm fronds, singing and shampooing in the rain. This upbeat story about a loving Puerto Rican family will strike a reassuring chord. (author’s notes on hurricanes) (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-8050-6203-3
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2000
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 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.
