A gorgeously rendered affirmation fueled by powerful metaphors to bolster self-love.
Encouraging words help young readers value their own inner lights in this beautifully painted, self-esteem-bolstering picture book.
Electric lights turn on and off, but two lights remain constant: the sun and each person’s own inner light. “It beams out through your grin and is uniquely yours,” the narrator explains, celebrating qualities such as intelligence, determination, and curiosity that make that light shine. Just as the sun sometimes goes behind a cloud, inner lights also change; they can foster community, encourage bravery, offer fortitude in the face of a struggle, or support determination in spite of failure. Sometimes, the light is seen in a reflection in others. Despite struggles and trials, it always flickers back to life. Cino’s scientific description of the sun sets a tone for the concept of inner value to be treated as fact, bolstering the messages of self-acceptance and appreciation with an aura of authority. But the text also has a comforting cadence, couched in poetic descriptions with vocabulary-stretching words (such as emits and persistent) well placed for easy understanding. Saumell’s beautiful paintings feature well-lit backgrounds with clear, textured brush strokes. The images seem to follow one main child with fair skin and brown hair, growing from young to older into the adult years and grandparenthood. The bright colors are captivating, and lap readers will pore over the book’s pages.
A gorgeously rendered affirmation fueled by powerful metaphors to bolster self-love.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9798988925101
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whimspire Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions.
Ellis, known for her illustrations for Colin Meloy’s Wildwood series, here riffs on the concept of “home.”
Shifting among homes mundane and speculative, contemporary and not, Ellis begins and ends with views of her own home and a peek into her studio. She highlights palaces and mansions, but she also takes readers to animal homes and a certain famously folkloric shoe (whose iconic Old Woman manages a passel of multiethnic kids absorbed in daring games). One spread showcases “some folks” who “live on the road”; a band unloads its tour bus in front of a theater marquee. Ellis’ compelling ink and gouache paintings, in a palette of blue-grays, sepia and brick red, depict scenes ranging from mythical, underwater Atlantis to a distant moonscape. Another spread, depicting a garden and large building under connected, transparent domes, invites readers to wonder: “Who in the world lives here? / And why?” (Earth is seen as a distant blue marble.) Some of Ellis’ chosen depictions, oddly juxtaposed and stripped of any historical or cultural context due to the stylized design and spare text, become stereotypical. “Some homes are boats. / Some homes are wigwams.” A sailing ship’s crew seems poised to land near a trio of men clad in breechcloths—otherwise unidentified and unremarked upon.
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6529-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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