Truck lovers of any gender will find this title a treat, but the hyperfeminine companion is sadly restrictive.
Richly textured board pages and a limited color palette distinguish this tribute to trucks.
The gray buckram cover is a delight to hold, while bright red endpapers promise excitement within. Beautifully designed using shades of red, black, white, and brown on matte pages, the whole package has a retro, letterpress feel. The first truck is a firetruck big enough for a brown-skinned child to straddle. Later pages feature construction vehicles, a flatbed trailer, and an ice cream truck. The slight text has a lyrical quality, though the occasional rhymes seem accidental. Relatively abstract concepts are casually introduced, “Love is a kid who lines them all up. Biggest to smallest, color by color.” On the final page the brown-skinned child is kissed goodnight while clutching a truck under a road-patterned blanket. The main character wears plaid bib overalls and has longish curly hair. Another child, also brown-skinned, with close-cropped hair, plays with the construction trucks, shares a treat from the ice cream truck, and offers a goodnight kiss. Unfortunately, a less gender-neutral companion volume, Love Is a Tutu, clearly aims for the ballerina market with an excess of pink. Together the two books assure little girls they can love both tutus and trucks. Unfortunately, they send a mixed message to little boys.
Truck lovers of any gender will find this title a treat, but the hyperfeminine companion is sadly restrictive. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-937359-86-7
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Cameron + Company
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Marvelous—poised to make train converts of readers one and all.
A distilled, perfected love of all things locomotive.
An anthropomorphic puppy tells readers right from the start, “I like playing with my train.” This play includes both running a toy train along tracks and stringing cardboard boxes together, pretending to be the engineer. They love reading a wide variety of books about all kinds of different trains, but best of all is when they get to ride with their parent on the train. Tickets purchased, they find the platform, their train, and their seats. The world goes whizzing by, and at the end there is Grandma and a train playground nearby, to boot. Simple storytelling and even simpler words make this an ideal selection for even the youngest of train enthusiasts. The protagonist’s gender is left wide open for children of all kinds to identify with. Hirst’s screen-printed art is rendered in bright, bold colors of exceeding cheer and good humor. Her world bustles with dogs of many colors, all unclothed but many accessorized: with backpacks, purses, glasses, etc. One dog at the railway station uses a wheelchair. Tantalizingly, a cat seems to wave at the protagonist from a passing train. Even children that might describe themselves as train neutral may feel a twinge of envy or longing as the hero’s train whooshes past backyards, roads, factories, boats, and more on their journey. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11.7-by-20.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 19% of actual size.)
Marvelous—poised to make train converts of readers one and all. (Picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1276-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
The commercial angle may earn sales, but the train may be running out of steam.
Licensed Disney characters and hidden items galore await discovery on the latest fold-out train in this well received series.
Following the general track of previous entries, readers are invited to join Mickey Mouse on a quest for his hidden kite. Unfolding pages and lifting up large flaps on their way through the train, they are challenged to pick out significant details like green, red, sour, and sweet foods on a laden table in the dining car, zigzags and stripes on a blizzard of hair bows created in the lounge car by fellow passenger Minnie, and dozens of acorns scattered throughout by Chip and Dale, among others. A landscape on the back sides of the cars offers opportunities to count sheep and spot a few more surprises. Poring over each car’s crowded contents offers distractions and discoveries aplenty—but it’s hard not to notice that Kolb devotes more attention to the settings than to the Disney content. He depicts the cartoon cast members looking at each other or off into the distance rather than at viewers and Mickey, cast as the chatty narrator, with his mouth closed most of the time. The figures look posed rather than expressive…not exactly pasted in, but not really participating in the action either. The sense of disconnection extends to the narrative, in which all of the characters appearing here consistently get name checks except Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
The commercial angle may earn sales, but the train may be running out of steam. (Board book/novelty. 2-4)Pub Date: March 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-5236-0
Page Count: 8
Publisher: Abrams Appleseed
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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