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
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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
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