This lengthy wordless story follows a small red star on a vast journey. Starting off on the ocean floor, the star is swirled up onto the water’s surface by the motion of a boat and its anchor. It floats for a while, is washed onto the beach, and is discovered by a doll-faced child carrying a red bucket. The child tucks the star blissfully into her hair, but it’s almost immediately snatched by a seagull and carried up into the heavens. Outerspace is black and starlit, painted more dramatically than the other environments. When the seagull vanishes into the distance, the red star remains with the yellow-white regular stars, identical except in color. Soon it dives back towards earth, crashes into the ocean, and drifts back down to the ocean floor, where it began. The anchor next to it—either the same anchor as at the beginning or a similar one—implies that perhaps this journey has been part of a cycle and will begin again. Alternatively, it could imply that the star has been in one place all along and has been dreaming. Is it really a star, as the title says, or is it a starfish? Such philosophical questions are the only things left up to the reader; unlike in some wordless books, the plot here is too straightforward to allow much interpretation. While thoughtful perusers looking for something quiet might enjoy this, there’s nothing special in the paintings. (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7868-1939-1
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
An innocuous telling, sure to slip in effortlessly with other firetruck books.
A little fire engine discovers what it’s good at by eliminating what it is not.
Who knew disappointment could be such a keen teaching tool? Narrator Flash is eager to demonstrate firefighting prowess, but every attempt to “save the day” yields bubkes. First Flash is too little to handle a fire at the airport (Crash, an airport crash tender, handles that one). Next Flash is too short to help a tall building that’s on fire (that honor goes to Laddie, a turntable ladder). Finally, an airplane and a foam tender together solve a forest-fire problem. Only when a bridge is suddenly blocked by snow, with all the other trucks on the wrong side of it, does Flash have the opportunity to save a pet shelter that’s ablaze. (Readers will note characters in shirtsleeves at the beginning of the book, so this is a very unexpected snowstorm.) Calvert deftly finds a new way to introduce kids to different kinds of firefighting vehicles by setting up Flash in opposition to situations where it’s just not the best truck for the job. The anthropomorphized engines and planes irritatingly include unnecessary eyelashes on trucks with feminine pronouns, but this is mitigated by the fact that the girls get cool names like “Crash” and save the day first. Enthusiastic if unremarkable digital art presents both firefighters and citizens in an array of genders and races.
An innocuous telling, sure to slip in effortlessly with other firetruck books. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-4178-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Two Lions
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Arrr, ’tis a seaworthy tale, so set your compass toward fulfilling your dreams, and she’ll not steer you wrong.
A simple ship yields a (relatively) big adventure in this classically told tale.
In a little cabin on a little lake, there lives a mouse named Mabel, a boy, and a man. The man constructs a very special model ship. “He wouldn’t even let the boy help.” Every night when she looks at it, Mabel wonders if the ship is seaworthy. She lets herself dream of piloting it through seas both rough and calm, “free and full of wonder.” When an opportunity presents itself, Mabel hesitates but reasons that the chance may never come again. Readers will be relieved to find that the ship does indeed float, but when the ship meets with tragedy, both Mabel and the man will need to find a solution. Jonker cleverly juxtaposes the mouse’s character arc alongside that of the grown man. Whereas Mabel must summon the courage to live her dreams, the man must overcome his fear of letting other people help him with his own. Cordell, meanwhile, outlines panels with rope, then fills his images to the brim with a busy cross-hatching technique that gives the book a timeless feel. Both boy and man in the book have light-brown skin.
Arrr, ’tis a seaworthy tale, so set your compass toward fulfilling your dreams, and she’ll not steer you wrong. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593350577
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
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