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RANGOLI

DISCOVERING THE ART OF INDIAN DECORATION

The passing on of a traditional art from grandparent to grandchild is a worthy topic, but this short book provides too quick...

What happens when a young city girl wakes up early in her grandma’s village?

In the courtyard, she sees a large design of wavy lines enclosed in squares. There are graceful half-circles and curvilinear designs forming diamonds and teardrops. Grandma tells her about the custom of mixing rice flour and sugar and inviting ants and birds to share in this bounty as a good deed. Adding colored dyes, women create intricate designs to beautify exterior walls, courtyards and streets. The girl sees the designs everywhere. She wonders: “Where will I do a rangoli at our flat in the city?” Using a slate and chalk, Grandma demonstrates a design that she can replicate in her apartment hallway. The watercolor-and-pastel illustrations vary from full-bleed double-page spreads to smaller panels; some illustrations feature cartoonlike, wide-eyed people and animals, and others focus on the rangoli, both geometric and pictorial. Outside of the subtitle, there is no mention of place, although the illustrations picture Indian life. In India, where this book was originally published, this art may have seemed familiar. Here, children with no prior knowledge may still be intrigued by the designs and the custom, to which this slim book is a brief introduction.

The passing on of a traditional art from grandparent to grandchild is a worthy topic, but this short book provides too quick a glimpse of India and no real story development. (Picture book. 3-5)

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2011

ISBN: 978-1-84780-179-1

Page Count: 20

Publisher: Frances Lincoln

Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011

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CINDERELLA

From the Once Upon a World series

A nice but not requisite purchase.

A retelling of the classic fairy tale in board-book format and with a Mexican setting.

Though simplified for a younger audience, the text still relates the well-known tale: mean-spirited stepmother, spoiled stepsisters, overworked Cinderella, fairy godmother, glass slipper, charming prince, and, of course, happily-ever-after. What gives this book its flavor is the artwork. Within its Mexican setting, the characters are olive-skinned and dark-haired. Cultural references abound, as when a messenger comes carrying a banner announcing a “FIESTA” in beautiful papel picado. Cinderella is the picture of beauty, with her hair up in ribbons and flowers and her typically Mexican many-layered white dress. The companion volume, Snow White, set in Japan and illustrated by Misa Saburi, follows the same format. The simplified text tells the story of the beautiful princess sent to the forest by her wicked stepmother to be “done away with,” the dwarves that take her in, and, eventually, the happily-ever-after ending. Here too, what gives the book its flavor is the artwork. The characters wear traditional clothing, and the dwarves’ house has the requisite shoji screens, tatami mats and cherry blossoms in the garden. The puzzling question is, why the board-book presentation? Though the text is simplified, it’s still beyond the board-book audience, and the illustrations deserve full-size books.

A nice but not requisite purchase. (Board book/fairy tale. 3-5)

Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4814-7915-8

Page Count: 24

Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017

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THE THREE LITTLE SUPERPIGS AND THE GINGERBREAD MAN

Superheroes, and readers, will live happily-ever-after.

Why have fairy tales lasted so long? Maybe it’s because they change with every teller.

It takes surprisingly little effort to turn the Three Little Pigs into superheroes. The Big Bad Wolf basically started out as a supervillain, with the ability to blow a house down, and the pigs had to perform spectacular feats to outwit him. In this picture book, the wolf, locked in the Happily Never After tower, devises a plot to escape. Using rotten eggs and spicy ginger, he creates the Gingerbread Man, who makes his way to a baking contest where the three pigs and other fairy-tale characters are competing to win the key to the city. The Gingerbread Man grabs the key, and not even superhero pigs are fast enough to catch him, but with their secret weapon—mustard (which one of the pigs also uses to bake cookies)—they save the day. The morals: Evil never triumphs, and mustard cookies are delicious. The book’s charm is in the details. There are splotches of mustard on the cookies featured on the endpapers, and a sly-looking mouse is hiding on many of the pages. The story even manages to include more than a dozen fairy-tale figures without seeming frenzied. Evans’ use of shading is so skillful that it almost seems possible to reach out and touch the characters. Most of the human characters are light-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Superheroes, and readers, will live happily-ever-after. (Picture book. 3-5)

Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-338-68221-2

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Scholastic

Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022

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