A valuable addition to the social-emotional–learning bookshelf.
A girl learns to confront her grief, loneliness, and frustration with a trip to the beach.
In this fourth installment of her picture-book series on navigating emotions, Chandra Ghosh Ippen brings readers lonely child Ellie. The girl lives with Miss K., but what she wants is to see her mother again. Unfortunately, her mom doesn’t write or call, leaving Ellie confused about how her parent feels and whether she cares about her. Ellie tends to act out despite Miss K.’s best efforts. One day, Miss K. announces she wishes to “go to the beach and yell into the waves” but that she needs Ellie to help her. They venture out and release their frustrations into the water before meeting up with Ellie’s Uncle Finn to talk about her mom. While short, this story manages to pack healthy coping techniques, discussions of grief, and an acknowledgment of how complicated emotions can be in a kid-friendly package. Finn uses an easy-to-understand metaphor involving waves to explain what Ellie’s mom is going through in such a way that it can be applied to numerous situations that readers can relate to—though Erich Ippen Jr.’s illustrations hint that she may be struggling with a form of mental illness. Throughout the tale, the images are simple watercolor pictures that effectively use a palette that starts out dark, then switches to brighter colors as Ellie’s mood improves. All of the characters are depicted with brown skin.
A valuable addition to the social-emotional–learning bookshelf. (Picture book for ages 3-5.)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1950168101
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Piplo Productions
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Let these crayons go back into their box.
The Crayons return to celebrate Easter.
Six crayons (Red, Orange, Yellow, Esteban, who is green and wears a yellow cape, White, and Blue) each take a shape and scribble designs on it. Purple, perplexed and almost angry, keeps asking why no one is creating an egg, but the six friends have a great idea. They take the circle decorated with red shapes, the square adorned with orange squiggles “the color of the sun,” the triangle with yellow designs, also “the color of the sun” (a bit repetitious), a rectangle with green wavy lines, a white star, about which Purple remarks: “DID you even color it?” and a rhombus covered with blue markings and slap the shapes onto a big, light-brown egg. Then the conversation turns to hiding the large object in plain sight. The joke doesn’t really work, the shapes are not clear enough for a concept book, and though colors are delineated, it’s not a very original color book. There’s a bit of clever repartee. When Purple observe that Esteban’s green rectangle isn’t an egg, Esteban responds, “No, but MY GOSH LOOK how magnificent it is!” Still, that won’t save this lackluster book, which barely scratches the surface of Easter, whether secular or religious. The multimedia illustrations, done in the same style as the other series entries, are always fun, but perhaps it’s time to retire these anthropomorphic coloring implements. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Let these crayons go back into their box. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-62105-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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