A touching immigrant story that hits the heart—and stomach.
When a young Chinese girl moves to a country where she doesn’t speak the language, her lunchbox holds all the comforts of home—and offers an opportunity for friendship.
The story begins in the book’s endpapers as the cityscape of Hong Kong on the left blends cleverly into a suburban American street on the right. Jun happily sets off for school. She knows just a handful of English phrases (she’s scrawled several words and their Cantonese translations onto her hand), and her big smile disappears as the day progresses, the colors fading from her world as she struggles to communicate. But when she opens her lunchbox in the cafeteria, she finds herself surrounded by vibrantly depicted memories, and her smile returns. Each school day’s loneliness is punctuated by the joy of lunchtime, and by the following week, a few classmates, and Jun herself, become brave enough to use food as an opening for friendship. Mo relies on both full-page illustrations and comiclike panels; apart from minimal dialogue presented in speech bubbles, it’s a mostly wordless tale. Similar in theme and structure to Young Vo’s Gibberish (2022), the narrative charts its protagonist’s emotional state through color, composition, body language, and visual detail. Round-faced, endearing Jun is utterly expressive; her sadness upon returning home each day is especially palpable. Jun’s community is a diverse one.
A touching immigrant story that hits the heart—and stomach. (glossary, information on Chinese foods) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9780593661345
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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
BOOK REVIEW
As insubstantial as hot air.
A diverse cast of children first makes a fleet of hot air balloons and then takes to the sky in them.
Lifestyle maven Gaines uses this activity as a platform to celebrate diversity in learning and working styles. Some people like to work together; others prefer a solo process. Some take pains to plan extensively; others know exactly what they want and jump right in. Some apply science; others demonstrate artistic prowess. But “see how beautiful it can be when / our differences share the same sky?” Double-page spreads leading up to this moment of liftoff are laid out such that rhyming abcb quatrains typically contain one or two opposing concepts: “Some of us are teachers / and share what we know. / But all of us are learners. / Together is how we grow!” In the accompanying illustration, a bespectacled, Asian-presenting child at a blackboard lectures the other children on “balloon safety.” Gaines’ text has the ring of sincerity, but the sentiment is hardly an original one, and her verse frequently sacrifices scansion for rhyme. Sometimes it abandons both: “We may not look / or work or think the same, / but we all have an / important part to play.” Swaney’s delicate, pastel-hued illustrations do little to expand on the text, but they are pretty. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11.2-by-18.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 70.7% of actual size.)
As insubstantial as hot air. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4003-1423-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tommy Nelson
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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