To many if not most children, a first visit to a car wash can be a terrifying experience.
Crespo opens her My Emotions and Me series with—as the Mood-o-Meter on the front cover indicates—“Scared.” Behind a homemade shark mask, young J.P. is fierce enough at home, but a trip through the wash in the family car plunges him into paroxysms of dread: “The giant octopus tried to cover our car with slime. / Then it tried to smash us. I couldn’t see anything. And there were creepy noises all around.” In Sirotich’s very simple cartoon illustrations, the car wash becomes an undersea scene featuring a huge orange octopus. Once J.P. remembers that “I am a brave shark,” he turns the tables—though not without empathy. As the toothy predator, he smiles and apologizes after making the octopus cry and then realizing that it “just wanted to play.” Co-published J.P. and the Polka-Dotted Aliens does similar bibliotherapeutic work with (as the Mood-o-Meter puts it) “Mad,” as J.P. modifies his initial response to two girls (thicker skinned than the octopus) who force him to share a playground. Both episodes close with advice for parents and a short reading list.
Quick, cut-and-dried behavior modeling to share with children in the wakes of common emotional tempests. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8075-3975-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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Brock may be dressed like a superhero, but he sure doesn’t feel like one, as social anxieties threaten to rain on his fun .
Juan’s superhero-themed birthday party is about to start, but Brock is feeling trepidatious about attending without his brother as his trusty sidekick. His costume does not fit quite right, and he is already running late, and soon Brock is “way past worried.” When he arrives at the party he takes some deep breaths but is still afraid to jump in and so hides behind a tree. Hiding in the same tree is the similarly nervous Nelly, who’s new to the neighborhood. Through the simple act of sharing their anxieties, the children find themselves ready to face their fears. This true-to-life depiction of social anxiety is simply but effectively rendered. While both Nelly and Brock try taking deep breathes to calm their anxieties without success, it is the act of sharing their worries in a safe space with someone who understands that ultimately brings relief. With similar themes, Brock’s tale would make a lovely companion for Tom Percival’s Ruby Finds a Worry (2019) on social-emotional–development bookshelves. Brock is depicted with black hair and tan skin, Nelly presents White, and peers at the party appear fairly diverse.
Though books on childhood anxiety are numerous, it is worth making space on the shelf for this one. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8075-8686-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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A gray character tries to write an all-gray book.
The six primary and secondary colors are building a rainbow, each contributing the hue of their own body, and Gray feels forlorn and left out because rainbows contain no gray. So Gray—who, like the other characters, has a solid, triangular body, a doodle-style face, and stick limbs—sets off alone to create “the GRAYest book ever.” His book inside a book shows a peaceful gray cliff house near a gray sea with gentle whitecaps; his three gray characters—hippo, wolf, kitten—wait for their arc to begin. But then the primaries arrive and call the gray scene “dismal, bleak, and gloomy.” The secondaries show up too, and soon everyone’s overrunning Gray’s creation. When Gray refuses to let White and Black participate, astute readers will note the flaw: White and black (the colors) had already been included in the early all-gray spreads. Ironically, Gray’s book within a book displays calm, passable art while the metabook’s unsubtle illustrations and sloppy design make for cramped and crowded pages that are too busy to hold visual focus. The speech-bubble dialogue’s snappy enough (Blue calls people “dude,” and there are puns). A convoluted moral muddles the core artistic question—whether a whole book can be gray—and instead highlights a trite message about working together.
Low grade. (glossary) (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-4340-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Two Lions
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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