Very few artists understand a child’s anxieties as deeply—or represent them so thoroughly—as Browne. Here, he presents Billy, who worries about “many things”: hats, shoes, clouds, rain and giant birds, until his grandmother gives him some Guatemalan worry dolls to do the work for him. All is well for a few nights, but then he starts to worry about the dolls’ worries—so he makes more dolls for all of them. This master of surrealism pictures Billy against his trademark wallpaper (which changes subtly with each separate worry) in mono-tinted compositions that trap him in bed, at the mercy of his fears. The highly saturated colors of Guatemalan weaving surround these disturbing images, insulating readers from their full impact and anticipating the eventual relief. Billy himself is human (though he wears a familiar vest), his round face and big ears only vaguely chimp-like; the adults in his life are reassuringly soft and bulky. It’s a sweet acknowledgement that all kids have fears that plague them, and puts a wonderfully childlike solution at their disposal. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7636-3124-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
Low grade.
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 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Will give children the emotional distance to process their own first-day jitters.
Everyone’s nervous about going to school—even your backpack!
After months of relaxing in the closet over the summer, a green backpack quivers with nerves when it hears the words back to school. The backpack has to be pried from the closet by a light-skinned child with a blond ponytail. Going to school is, we learn, a far more terrifying prospect for a backpack. “First you open my mouth and shove a bunch of strange new books and binders down my throat.” Slung over the child’s shoulders, the backpack “can’t even see where I’m going.” At school, the backpack is smashed, stuffed, and dragged. But the worst part of school is that the backpack doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere—a feeling that will be familiar to many readers. All that changes when it crashes into another backpack worn by a child with dark skin, short curly hair, and glasses. The punny moral of the story? Life is better with a friend “because you don’t have to carry everything alone.” This funny romp will leave readers feeling empowered for their own first days. Strategically placed black pages with white lettering ramp up the drama. In Toro’s exaggerated cartoon illustrations, the backpack is wonderfully expressive, its eyes and zipper mouth conveying panic, nausea, a longing to belong, and, finally, happiness. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Will give children the emotional distance to process their own first-day jitters. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9780316628341
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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