by Barbara Bottner & photographed by Laura Grier ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2012
A dream come true for little girls who love to dress up, but more than a bit too syrupy for some.
A little girl is thrilled to be a flower girl in her aunt Penny’s wedding.
There are so many things she’ll get to do. She’ll have fancy shoes, a bouquet and flowers in her hair, and, best of all, she’ll wear a lovely white dress just like the bride’s. On the day of the wedding, she’s nervous, but she reassures the ring bearer with a somewhat unappreciated good-luck kiss. Everything goes smoothly, and there’s dancing and cake too. Bottner’s slight, lighter-than-air tale, written in the simple first-person voice of the tiny heroine, takes its cue from the perennial obsession with weddings, princesses and the like. Grier’s wedding-album photos neatly capture every moment of this little girl’s special day. It’s all very sweet and charming, and young girls who read it will probably sigh and wish for their own chance to be in a wedding. But there might be some uncomfortable caveats for the adults sharing it with them. It seems staged and contrived and too darn cute. The narrator has no name, although the bride, groom (this is a "traditional" wedding all the way) and ring bearer are all named. At the end, her only wish for happiness is to be a bride someday.
A dream come true for little girls who love to dress up, but more than a bit too syrupy for some. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7614-6119-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
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by George Shannon ; illustrated by Blanca Gómez ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 26, 2015
A visually striking, engaging picture book that sends the message that everyone counts.
A playful counting book also acts as a celebration of family and human diversity.
Shannon’s text is delivered in spare, rhythmic, lilting verse that begins with one and counts up to 10 as it presents different groupings of things and people in individual families, always emphasizing the unitary nature of each combination. “One is six. One line of laundry. One butterfly’s legs. One family.” Gomez’s richly colored pictures clarify and expand on all that the text lists: For “six,” a picture showing six members of a multigenerational family of color includes a line of laundry with six items hanging from it outside of their windows, as well as the painting of a six-legged butterfly that a child in the family is creating. While text never directs the art to depict diverse individuals and family constellations, Gomez does just this in her illustrations. Interracial families are included, as are depictions of men with their arms around each other, and a Sikh man wearing a turban. This inclusive spirit supports the text’s culminating assertion that “One is one and everyone. One earth. One world. One family.”
A visually striking, engaging picture book that sends the message that everyone counts. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-374-30003-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
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by Lesléa Newman & illustrated by Mike Dutton ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 26, 2011
It may be his mothers’ wedding day, but it’s Donovan’s big day in Newman’s (Heather Has Two Mommies, 1989, etc.) latest picture book about queer family life. Centered on the child’s experience and refreshingly eschewing reference to controversy, the book emerges as a celebration of not only Mommy’s and Mama’s mutual love but progress toward equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. Readers, however, don't know immediately know why it is “a very BIG day” for Donovan or what the “very BIG job” is that he has to do. In his affectionate, humorous gouache paintings with digital finish, Dutton cleverly includes clues in the form of family pictures in an earlier spread set inside their home, and then a later spread shows Donovan in a suit and placing a “little white satin box that Aunt Jennifer gave him” into his pocket, hinting toward his role as ring bearer. But it’s not until the third-to-last spread that he stands with his parents and hands “one shiny gold ring to Mommy [and] one shiny gold ring to Mama.” He, of course, gets to kiss the brides on the last page, lending a happily-ever-after sensibility to the end of this story about a family's new beginning. (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: April 26, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58246-332-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tricycle
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
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