This sweet and gentle bedtime story, reinforced by soft pastel backgrounds and simple ink illustrations, assures young...
A debut picture book offers a letter to an eagerly awaited child.
The opening words are the work’s title, as an expectant mother sits in a rocking chair, looking fondly at a teddy bear. Accompanied by an image of tiny hands grabbing adult fingers, the text continues: “I loved your tiny hands and couldn’t wait to hold them.” Author Bear continues with each feature of the infant that’s so keenly anticipated: feet to kiss, smiles to see, baby noises to hear, and naps to watch in stillness and admiration. After the baby is born, there is even more love to be shared, and each of those items is revisited. Now the parent addressing the child gets to do, feel, and see all those things described previously. Robinson’s shaded ink drawings feature a variety of diverse parents and babies. The black-and-white art is contrasted with the watercolor backgrounds by Katelyn Bear (the author’s daughter), giving subtle blends of color to the backgrounds, primarily in pastels. While this lacks the sharp juxtaposition supposedly most enticing to infants, the delicate patterns and serene bursts of color are soothing, perfectly matching the comforting tone of the text. The sentences follow a pattern, the first set beginning with “I loved your”; the second, repeating the noun of the first, starts with or includes “I get to.” Those recurring words and activities reinforce the vocabulary for the youngest audiences. The tone of the phrases also gives the listener the sense that whoever is reading the story feels lucky and privileged to have that child as part of the family’s life, to be adored. Despite all the exclamation points, the appealing book creates the lulling message that affection has no limits.
This sweet and gentle bedtime story, reinforced by soft pastel backgrounds and simple ink illustrations, assures young listeners that they have always been surrounded by love.Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5255-0568-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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