This original fairy tale looks as timeworn as a fairy tale should, with a story just runic enough to keep the wheels turning in little minds.
“It was a greyish-blue day. Rainy and windy, it tasted like a dandelion blowball, felt like a wax cloth, smelt like a bonfire and was as long and slimy, as an earthworm.” Just the kind of day you might expect to find a hole in the pocket of your coat. A Man in a village finds himself in such a predicament. And worse: “[The] hole in his jacket turned out to be the size of his childhood. The Man has lost it a long, very long time ago.” Now, repairing the hole might cut the Man off completely from his childhood, so the fairy Zhuzha tells him to hold on, she’ll go look. She runs into a princess, who is literally fishing for compliments, and some squawking birds. Zhuzha has a brainstorm, even if it does mean she will be spending much time in the dark: She is “of the same size as the hole in [the] pocket.” The brief story (just six pages) is laid out on sepia-toned backgrounds with fine-lined, gently animated cartoon drawings to accompany the text. The village looks like a 19th-century shtetl preserved in amber, though it has (really charming) moving parts.
A sweetly, quietly appealing piece of whimsy. (iPad storybook app. 4-10)Pub Date: July 4, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Timecode
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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The junior senator from California introduces family and friends as everyday superheroes.
The endpapers are covered with cascades of, mostly, early childhood snapshots (“This is me contemplating the future”—caregivers of toddlers will recognize that abstracted look). In between, Harris introduces heroes in her life who have shaped her character: her mom and dad, whose superpowers were, respectively, to make her feel special and brave; an older neighbor known for her kindness; grandparents in India and Jamaica who “[stood] up for what’s right” (albeit in unspecified ways); other relatives and a teacher who opened her awareness to a wider world; and finally iconic figures such as Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley who “protected people by using the power of words and ideas” and whose examples inspired her to become a lawyer. “Heroes are…YOU!” she concludes, closing with a bulleted Hero Code and a timeline of her legal and political career that ends with her 2017 swearing-in as senator. In group scenes, some of the figures in the bright, simplistic digital illustrations have Asian features, some are in wheelchairs, nearly all are people of color. Almost all are smiling or grinning. Roe provides everyone identified as a role model with a cape and poses the author, who is seen at different ages wearing an identifying heart pin or decoration, next to each.
Self-serving to be sure but also chock-full of worthy values and sentiments. (Picture book/memoir. 5-8)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-984837-49-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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Coco, who loves her gentle friend Bear, is shocked to learn that the other forest animals do not know about his kindness.
Inspired by one of her grandmother’s favorite maxims, Coco, a girl with light brown skin and curly brown hair, works with Bear to “share some kindness [and] bring some light” to the other animals in the forest. Interpreting it literally, the two make cookies (kindness) and lanterns (light) to share with the other animals. They trek through the snow-covered forest to deliver their gifts, but no one trusts Bear enough to accept them. As night begins to fall, Bear and Coco head home with the lanterns and cookies. On the way through the quiet forest, they hear a small voice pleading for help; it’s Baby Deer, stuck in the snow. They help free him, and Bear gives the young one a ride home on his back. When the other animals see both that Baby Deer is safe and that Bear is responsible for this, they begin to recognize all the wonderful things about Bear that they had not noticed before. The episode is weak on backstory—how did Coco and Bear become friends? Why don’t the animals know Bear better by now?—but Stott’s delicately inked and colored illustrations offer beguiling views of lightly anthropomorphized woodland critters that make it easy to move past these stumbling blocks. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-18-inch double-page spreads viewed at 67% of actual size.)
Lit with sweetness. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6238-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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