Lots of spirited, stimulating good fun.
What a difference a year can make.
The Tanakas have moved into a new neighborhood. While keeping up with the family over the course of a year, readers are asked to respond to queries on each page, set in type that’s a different color than the main text. On a spread depicting the community enjoying the cherry blossoms in the park, readers are invited to count the trees and to find a cat in a stroller. On another spread, where the Tanakas are getting ready for summer vacation, kids are asked to identify the flowers growing by the family’s house. Children will delight in finding other, unasked-for items, since the bright, flat visuals feature numerous vibrant neighborhood activities. This entertaining Australian import lets little ones hone their visual-literacy skills, practice counting, and develop color appreciation. The Tanakas take center stage throughout, since their new home is literally in the middle of each illustration; a slim, illustrated captioned panel on the right-hand side of most pages offers another take on what they’re doing. Seasonal shifts are reflected in background-color changes; the winter page depicts characters celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah. Names and other details cue the pink-skinned Tanakas as Japanese; background residents vary in terms of skin color. The book uses Briticisms such as pram and Mum.
Lots of spirited, stimulating good fun. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781922610690
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Berbay Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
Safe to creep on by.
Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.
In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.
Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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