An encouraging tale for young readers with their own fears to face.
An outdoors-loving girl overcomes her fear of water in this picture-book debut about positive self-talk.
Vicky, an enthusiastic girl with warm brown skin, dark brown eyes, and curly puffs of hair, loves being outdoors and playing in mud and dirt with her friends. The rhyming narrative endorses this messiness but points out that this behavior is only OK if Vicky would be willing to take a bath each night: “But no, this is not her way.” Vicky’s fear of water keeps her from bathing more than once a week—and leaves her out when her best friends enjoy swimming at the beach. When one friend invites Vicky to a birthday party at a water park, Vicky determines that the time to overcome her fear has arrived. The Ssentamus, a married Australian team, introduce internal voices Negative Ned and Positive Ted to help readers understand how self-talk—and the voice Vicky chooses to listen to—influences Vicky's ability to overcome her fears. The rhyming stanzas flow well throughout and only occasionally introduce an unfamiliar term (fortnight) that might cause young American readers to stumble. Alshalabi’s warm digital cartoonlike illustrations capture both Vicky’s exuberance and her fear, and Vicky’s diverse friends and family (her mother has peach-toned skin with blue eyes and blond hair; her father, a deeper sepia skin tone and curly brown hair like Vicky’s) offer many young readers a chance to see themselves represented on the page. An afterword offers conversation starters for families to discuss fear and courage.
An encouraging tale for young readers with their own fears to face.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-6451293-0-4
Page Count: 38
Publisher: Pixel Publishing House
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An invitation to wonder, imagine and look at everything (humans included) in a new way.
A young boy sees things a little differently than others.
Noah can see patterns in the dust when it sparkles in the sunlight. And if he puts his nose to the ground, he can smell the “green tang of the ants in the grass.” His most favorite thing of all, however, is to read. Noah has endless curiosity about how and why things work. Books open the door to those answers. But there is one question the books do not explain. When the wind comes whistling by, where does it go? Noah decides to find out. In a chase that has a slight element of danger—wind, after all, is unpredictable—Noah runs down streets, across bridges, near a highway, until the wind lifts him off his feet. Cowman’s gusty wisps show each stream of air turning a different jewel tone, swirling all around. The ribbons gently bring Noah home, setting him down under the same thinking tree where he began. Did it really happen? Worthington’s sensitive exploration leaves readers with their own set of questions and perhaps gratitude for all types of perspective. An author’s note mentions children on the autism spectrum but widens to include all who feel a little different.
An invitation to wonder, imagine and look at everything (humans included) in a new way. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-60554-356-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Redleaf Lane
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
A validating and breathtaking next chapter of a Mother Goose favorite.
Humpty Dumpty, classically portrayed as an egg, recounts what happened after he fell off the wall in Santat’s latest.
An avid ornithophile, Humpty had loved being atop a high wall to be close to the birds, but after his fall and reassembly by the king’s men, high places—even his lofted bed—become intolerable. As he puts it, “There were some parts that couldn’t be healed with bandages and glue.” Although fear bars Humpty from many of his passions, it is the birds he misses the most, and he painstakingly builds (after several papercut-punctuated attempts) a beautiful paper plane to fly among them. But when the plane lands on the very wall Humpty has so doggedly been avoiding, he faces the choice of continuing to follow his fear or to break free of it, which he does, going from cracked egg to powerful flight in a sequence of stunning spreads. Santat applies his considerable talent for intertwining visual and textual, whimsy and gravity to his consideration of trauma and the oft-overlooked importance of self-determined recovery. While this newest addition to Santat’s successes will inevitably (and deservedly) be lauded, younger readers may not notice the de-emphasis of an equally important part of recovery: that it is not compulsory—it is OK not to be OK.
A validating and breathtaking next chapter of a Mother Goose favorite. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62672-682-6
Page Count: 45
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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