An exciting tale of misadventure and rescue.
A little girl and her brother get in a bit of trouble on a farm in Bartel’s illustrated children’s book.
In this tale, set roughly a century in the past, Dora is a little girl who does everything with her big brother, Henry. One day, she spots a harvest parade arriving to their farm and calls out to her sibling to watch the workers help their father: “Some men connected the tractor with a long heavy belt to the threshing machine. Some lined up the grain wagons. Others drove the hayracks into the field of stooks and gathered the yellow sheaves with pitchforks, tossing them onto the racks.” (Thankfully, a glossary at the beginning of the book explains the farming jargon for youngsters.) The next day, Dora and Henry can’t resist playing on the yellow pile of straw. Henry has an idea to climb the old, firm brown straw pile to jump across to the fresh yellow one and slide down its side. Henry goes first and makes it across, but when Dora follows, she falls into a hollow and disappears into the quicksand-like straw. Henry yells for help and their mother and Willie, a farmhand, come running to rescue Dora. Thompson’s full-color cartoon illustrations depict the landscape with simple backgrounds, drawing attention to the foreground action, which is particularly helpful when the prose describes details of the harvest process. The text can be challenging at times, as it’s littered with vocabulary that many children may find unfamiliar, but the eloquence and elegance of the storytelling (alongside the aforementioned glossary) make the book quite readable. Questions about the setting’s specific time and place go unanswered, but there are hints in the author’s family photographs, included at the book’s beginning and end. Ultimately, the sibling bond and the cooperative spirit of the farm effectively undergird the educational details about traditional farming practices. The main characters are depicted with pale skin; background characters have a range of skin tones.
An exciting tale of misadventure and rescue.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9781039196841
Page Count: 32
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions.
Ellis, known for her illustrations for Colin Meloy’s Wildwood series, here riffs on the concept of “home.”
Shifting among homes mundane and speculative, contemporary and not, Ellis begins and ends with views of her own home and a peek into her studio. She highlights palaces and mansions, but she also takes readers to animal homes and a certain famously folkloric shoe (whose iconic Old Woman manages a passel of multiethnic kids absorbed in daring games). One spread showcases “some folks” who “live on the road”; a band unloads its tour bus in front of a theater marquee. Ellis’ compelling ink and gouache paintings, in a palette of blue-grays, sepia and brick red, depict scenes ranging from mythical, underwater Atlantis to a distant moonscape. Another spread, depicting a garden and large building under connected, transparent domes, invites readers to wonder: “Who in the world lives here? / And why?” (Earth is seen as a distant blue marble.) Some of Ellis’ chosen depictions, oddly juxtaposed and stripped of any historical or cultural context due to the stylized design and spare text, become stereotypical. “Some homes are boats. / Some homes are wigwams.” A sailing ship’s crew seems poised to land near a trio of men clad in breechcloths—otherwise unidentified and unremarked upon.
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6529-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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