Like its predecessor, more a refreshingly animated exercise in building community and awareness than a specific procedural...
A heat wave and a drought spark more multi-fronted eco-activism in this sequel to Luz Sees the Light (2011).
Blasting sun, weeks without rain, scheduled brownouts and water rationing have taken their toll on Petroville and the dying community gardens in Friendship Park. As if that's not bad enough, wilted young Luz discovers to her shock that with the new Top Cola plant sucking up groundwater, the once-brimming Spring Pond outside of town has become only a mudhole. Everyone springs into action. Luz’s friends join her mother, her aged abuela and other adult allies to mount a protest campaign against Top Cola’s water use. Meanwhile, Luz helps neighbors set up rain barrels, hoses and a bathtub “mini-marsh” to filter graywater from local businesses for the gardens. At last a massive cloudburst and Top Cola’s promise to restore the pond bring sweet relief. It's plainly purposeful, as seen in dialogue (“Let’s look for other cases of water rights abuses around the world”; “Carbon footprint!”) and a concluding minifeature in which Luz helps a neighbor xeriscape a turf lawn. It's not just a lesson, though. The episode is fleshed out not only with character interaction and comedic side play, but in Dávila’s simply drawn, monochrome blue panels, in which figures pose and expostulate with theatrical energy.
Like its predecessor, more a refreshingly animated exercise in building community and awareness than a specific procedural guide for going green. (Graphic novel. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55453-762-4
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
This bittersweet tale takes readers into a dark, ancient woods in the American Northwest. A father and son make this forest their special place to commune with the wild, to visit with the creatures that live therein, and to revel in the mesmerizing views. One day they find spots painted on the trees, markings for loggers. The boy and his father and family ignite a small grassroots resistance to the felling of the trees. They fight for something they believe in—it is almost a sacred obligation for them—but they are unsuccessful: the laws governing private property prevail. The trees are cut and, luckily, the father and son find another stand in which to take solace. The Rands (A Home for Spooky, 1998, etc.) offer a bright fusion of the cautionary and the inspirational, and the artwork is effective in conveying the outsized majesty of the old growth. (Picture book. 6-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-5466-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
From McDonald (Tundra Mouse, 1997, etc.), a haunting, dramatic glimpse of the Bone Keeper, a trickster with special transformational powers. Some say Bone Woman is a ghost; some envision her with three heads that view past, present, and future simultaneously. Most, however, call her the “Skeleton Maker” or “Keeper of Bones.” Chanting, shaking, moaning, and wailing, the Bone Keeper is frenzied as she sorts bones; not until the end of the book are readers told, in murmuring lines of free verse, what the Bone Keeper is creating in her mysterious desert cave. Out of the darkness, a wolf springs to life, leaps from the cave, howling, a symbol of resurrection and proof of life’s cyclical nature. Also keeping readers guessing as to the Bone Keeper’s final creation are Karas’s paintings; they, too, require that the final piece of the puzzle be placed before all are understood. The coloring and textures embody the desert setting in the evening, showing the fearsome cave and sandy shadows that wait to release the mystery of the bones. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7894-2559-9
Page Count: 30
Publisher: DK Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
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