From a campfire lit by early humans to a campfire lit by a contemporary vacationing family, gathering together to share words and tales has always been in our DNA.
With just one sentence or phrase per illustration, Yaccarino gives voice to the many ways that humans have preserved, shared, and recorded their history through words and images. Sometimes the format is visual, as in cave paintings and picture writing. People around the world have also used papyrus, woodblocks, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, and plays to keep narratives alive. Pictures and words have been preserved in a wide variety of libraries and on movie, television, and computer screens. Spoken and written words have inspired and evoked strong emotional responses. Yaccarino uses India ink on vellum to create memorable, full-bleed and paneled illustrations. One double-page spread depicts an assortment of folk from many cultures and of many colors walking and reading their tablets (and not looking where they are going!). It’s a fairly Eurocentric history; including such other traditions as Native American and West African griot storytelling would have strengthened the narrative. Sharp eyes will take note of the starry transition from cave people to contemporary folk as astrological signs reappear as constellations.
All in all, this is a good introduction to stories, books, and reading. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-241106-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS
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A gray character tries to write an all-gray book.
The six primary and secondary colors are building a rainbow, each contributing the hue of their own body, and Gray feels forlorn and left out because rainbows contain no gray. So Gray—who, like the other characters, has a solid, triangular body, a doodle-style face, and stick limbs—sets off alone to create “the GRAYest book ever.” His book inside a book shows a peaceful gray cliff house near a gray sea with gentle whitecaps; his three gray characters—hippo, wolf, kitten—wait for their arc to begin. But then the primaries arrive and call the gray scene “dismal, bleak, and gloomy.” The secondaries show up too, and soon everyone’s overrunning Gray’s creation. When Gray refuses to let White and Black participate, astute readers will note the flaw: White and black (the colors) had already been included in the early all-gray spreads. Ironically, Gray’s book within a book displays calm, passable art while the metabook’s unsubtle illustrations and sloppy design make for cramped and crowded pages that are too busy to hold visual focus. The speech-bubble dialogue’s snappy enough (Blue calls people “dude,” and there are puns). A convoluted moral muddles the core artistic question—whether a whole book can be gray—and instead highlights a trite message about working together.
Low grade. (glossary) (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-4340-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Two Lions
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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A class visits the pumpkin patch, giving readers a chance to count down from 20.
At the farm, Farmer Mixenmatch gives them the tour, which includes a petting zoo, an educational area, a corn maze and a tractor ride to the pumpkin patch. Holub’s text cleverly though not always successfully rhymes each child’s name within the line: “ ‘Eighteen kids get on our bus,’ says Russ. / ‘But someone’s late,’ says Kate. / ‘Wait for me!’ calls Kiri.” Pumpkins at the tops of pages contain the numerals that match the text, allowing readers to pair them with the orange-colored, spelled-out numbers. Some of the objects proffered to count are a bit of a stretch—“Guess sixteen things we’ll see,” count 14 cars that arrived at the farm before the bus—but Smith’s artwork keeps things easy to count, except for a challenging page that asks readers to search for 17 orange items (answers are at the bottom, upside down). Strangely, Holub includes one page with nothing to count—a sign marks “15 Pumpkin Street.” Charming, multicultural round-faced characters and lots of detail encourage readers to go back through the book scouring pages for the 16 things the kids guessed they might see. Endpapers featuring a smattering of pumpkin facts round out the text.
Between its autumn and field-trip themes and the fact that not many books start countdowns from 20, this may find its way to many library shelves. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: July 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8075-6660-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS
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