Compelling and powerful.
A fierce, hopeful series of verses filtered through the Puerto Rican flag that focuses on the island, its people, and their fight for freedom.
Fourteen poems highlight the origins of la bandera (Spanish for flag) and key figures across the island’s history of rebellious defiance against its colonizers, spanning the late 19th century through the present. A concise foreword sets the stage, discussing the island’s current status as an unincorporated territory under the United States before shifting to the opening poems: “Brazo de Oro” details how Mariana Bracetti created Puerto Rico’s first bandera; “El Grito de Lares” centers on the first documented revolt against Spanish oppression. From there, readers glimpse moments of triumph and setbacks, including the eight days of independence from Spain and subsequent U.S. annexation in 1898, the “Gag Law” enacted in 1948 and enforced against anyone “calling for Puerto Rico’s freedom,” and the great unfurling of the Puerto Rican flag atop Lady Liberty by activists in 1977. Helpful contextual passages accompany some poems; the verse ranges from clear-eyed narrative threads to evocative, confident calls for strength, wrapped in piercing language. Throughout, Aldamuy Denise stresses the multifaceted will of Puerto Ricans, “woven into the fabric of us.” Lugo’s artwork, meanwhile, showcases the flag’s vibrant colors from poem to poem, with windswept images that lend momentum to each page. An intimate author’s note and brief notes of historical context for each poem provide ample space for further reflection.
Compelling and powerful. (selected sources) (Picture book/poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9780063216662
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two.
Rollicking verses on “numerous” topics.
Returning to the theme of her Mathematickles! (2003), illustrated by Steven Salerno, Franco gathers mostly new ruminations with references to numbers or arithmetical operations. “Do numerals get out of sorts? / Do fractions get along? / Do equal signs complain and gripe / when kids get problems wrong?” Along with universal complaints, such as why 16 dirty socks go into a washing machine but only 12 clean ones come out or why there are “three months of summer / but nine months of school!" (“It must have been grown-ups / who made up / that rule!”), the poet offers a series of numerical palindromes, a phone number guessing game, a two-voice poem for performative sorts, and, to round off the set, a cozy catalog of countable routines: “It’s knowing when night falls / and darkens my bedroom, / my pup sleeps just two feet from me. / That watching the stars flicker / in the velvety sky / is my glimpse of infinity!” Tey takes each entry and runs with it, adding comically surreal scenes of appropriately frantic or settled mood, generally featuring a diverse group of children joined by grotesques that look like refugees from Hieronymous Bosch paintings. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Readers can count on plenty of chuckles along with a mild challenge or two. (Poetry/mathematical picture book. 8-11)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0116-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.
In 1977, the oil carrier Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into a formerly pristine Alaskan ocean inlet, killing millions of birds, animals, and fish. Despite a cleanup, crude oil is still there.
The Winters foretold the destructive powers of the atomic bomb allusively in The Secret Project (2017), leaving the actuality to the backmatter. They make no such accommodations to young audiences in this disturbing book. From the dark front cover, on which oily blobs conceal a seabird, to the rescuer’s sad face on the back, the mother-son team emphasizes the disaster. A relatively easy-to-read and poetically heightened text introduces the situation. Oil is pumped from the Earth “all day long, all night long, / day after day, year after year” in “what had been unspoiled land, home to Native people // and thousands of caribou.” The scale of extraction is huge: There’s “a giant pipeline” leading to “enormous ships.” Then, crash. Rivers of oil gush out over three full-bleed wordless pages. Subsequent scenes show rocks, seabirds, and sea otters covered with oil. Finally, 30 years later, animals have returned to a cheerful scene. “But if you lift a rock… // oil / seeps / up.” For an adult reader, this is heartbreaking. How much more difficult might this be for an animal-loving child?
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 9-12)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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