Lively and lovely.
A friendship is formed, nearly lost, and re-established on a long train journey.
When blonde Molly and brunette Mae, both white, meet on the platform of a railroad station, they immediately connect. They play hide-and-seek, blow bubbles, and dance. When they board the train, they continue to play, sometimes getting rambunctious and annoying other passengers. All that closeness inevitably leads to conflict, and they turn away from each other as the train zooms through the timeless, vast, rural countryside. They cautiously restart the friendly atmosphere and enjoy the remainder of the trip together. Through all the action the girls’ moms (also both white) are vague and passive, barely visible. Energetic language in the form of clipped, action-filled sentences announce the children’s activities, and Parker further enhances the simple tale with lovely descriptions of the sights outside the train’s windows. The inventive format uses railway-signage iconography to situate readers as the book progresses, beginning on the platform of their starting point. There's a timetable of the girls’ games until boarding, and their argument is denoted as a signal failure. The illustrations employ windows and bridges—literal and figurative—as visual metaphors, keeping a comfortable rhythm until the girls reach their unnamed city destination. Blackwood’s softly hued illustrations, outlined in feathery, light-brown lines, fully illuminate the events with details only suggested in the text. Molly and Mae display every emotion with subtle changes of expression and body language.
Lively and lovely. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-328-71543-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted...
Reinvention is the name of the game for two blobs of clay.
A blue-eyed gray blob and a brown-eyed brown blob sit side by side, unsure as to what’s going to happen next. The gray anticipates an adventure, while the brown appears apprehensive. A pair of hands descends, and soon, amid a flurry of squishing and prodding and poking and sculpting, a handsome gray wolf and a stately brown owl emerge. The hands disappear, leaving the friends to their own devices. The owl is pleased, but the wolf convinces it that the best is yet to come. An ear pulled here and an extra eye placed there, and before you can shake a carving stick, a spurt of frenetic self-exploration—expressed as a tangled black scribble—reveals a succession of smug hybrid beasts. After all, the opportunity to become a “pig-e-phant” doesn’t come around every day. But the sound of approaching footsteps panics the pair of Picassos. How are they going to “fix [them]selves” on time? Soon a hippopotamus and peacock are staring bug-eyed at a returning pair of astonished hands. The creative naiveté of the “clay mates” is perfectly captured by Petty’s feisty, spot-on dialogue: “This was your idea…and it was a BAD one.” Eldridge’s endearing sculpted images are photographed against the stark white background of an artist’s work table to great effect.
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted fun of their own . (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-30311-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
The story’s slight but allows kids to practice identifying and dealing with their own big feelings.
The diverse group of kids from All Are Welcome (2018) this time gathers in a vacant lot with tools in hand to clear the debris and make something new. But therein lies the rub: What should the something new be? While the exact nature of the disagreement is unfortunately not made clear to readers, the big feelings that the children exhibit are very clear (and for readers who need practice reading facial clues, there’s a labeled chart of 15 in the frontmatter). This book’s refrain is “How can I help? / What can we do?” And the answers, spread over several pages and not spelled out in so many words but rather shown in the illustrations, are: talk it through, compromise, and see things from another perspective. As a guide for dealing with feelings and problem-solving, the book is a bit slim and lacks a solid story to hook readers. But, as with its predecessor, its strength is again the diversity on display in its pages. There’s a rainbow of skin tones and hair colors as well as abundant variation in hair texture, several children exhibit visible disabilities, including one child who uses a wheelchair, and there are markers of religious and cultural diversity. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at 29.6% of actual size.)
The story’s slight but allows kids to practice identifying and dealing with their own big feelings. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-57974-8
Page Count: 42
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
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