by Amy Krouse Rosenthal & illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2007
Promoting the virtues of adequacy, a stick figure with an “O” for a head atop a “K” body demonstrates moderate abilities to skip, climb, hide, share, swim and other common acts. The narrator’s OK with that, because “One day, I’ll grow up to be really excellent at something. I don’t know what it is yet…but I sure am having fun figuring it out.” Fluent lines and occasional patches of smooth color give the minimalist illustrations an easy visual flow appropriate to the low-pressure premise. Consider this esteem-building descendant of Robert Kraus’s Leo the Late Bloomer, illus by Jose Aruego and Ariane Dewey (1971), a healthier alternative to the pushier likes of Jamie Lee Curtis’s I’m Gonna Like Me, illus by Laura Cornell (2002), or Anne Morris’s Hats, Hats, Hats (1989). (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-06-115255-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2007
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by Dalai Lama & Desmond Tutu ; illustrated by Rafael López ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 27, 2022
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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by Matthew Cordell ; illustrated by Matthew Cordell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 7, 2023
A spellbinding tale that will never brown or fade with time.
Soup is always the correct solution.
Evergreen, a young squirrel who lives high in a tree in Buckthorn Forest, is afraid of most things, but top of the list is thunderstorms. When her mother, who makes magical soup, asks her to take an acorn full of soup to Granny Oak, who is ill with the flu, Evergreen is afraid that she won’t be brave enough to do it. But she knows she must—and that she must be careful not to spill a drop, as “Granny Oak will need every bit of it to get better.” Setting off, the scared squirrel encounters a menagerie of adventures and forest creatures in her journey. It’s a wild, imaginative read and one that twists and turns like a forest path, with unexpected surprises along the way. Cordell is a masterful storyteller, and readers will love following Evergreen’s journey as she grows into a more confident squirrel. The artwork is the real star of the show, however; there’s a hint of Sendak in the characters’ humorous expressions and in the timeless pen-and-watercolor backgrounds that cry out to be examined in detail. Educators and caregivers will love reading this story aloud in installments, and readers will adore seeing what Evergreen encounters in her travels. A hint of future stories will tantalize readers, who will close the book eager for a new volume to devour.
A spellbinding tale that will never brown or fade with time. (Early chapter book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-31717-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
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