A strange and special fairy tale that will resonate with many readers.
Baldwin takes readers on a tenacious trek in this hopeful picture book.
A boy leaves home for a sail in the morning, assuring his mother that he’ll return for dinner. A wild storm swallows up the boy, who’s rescued by a mermaid. She whisks him to the Island of the Eye, where he’ll always be safe—but alone forever. Determined to have a fuller life, the boy confronts walls of water, a dragon, and the “Reef of no Return,” but in order to survive, he must truly believe that he’s “stronger than any storm.” Baldwin seems to have intentionally created a generic character—one that effectively allows readers to see themselves in the eye of the storm, which can represent a range of real-life struggles. Efficient, descriptive word choices add to the fairy-tale feel of the story. The sparse text sometimes stumbles through the artwork and other times stands alone, establishing the weather’s rocky rhythm. The illustrations establish an emotional, heavy tone and simultaneously show and tell the tale; indeed, some events take place solely in Bell’s stark, black-and-white line drawings. In a time of pandemic, this survival story provides welcome sunlight in a surging storm.
A strange and special fairy tale that will resonate with many readers.Pub Date: April 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9791882-4-4
Page Count: 49
Publisher: Decozen Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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