The sentiment is true even when obscured, as here, by ostentatious graphic design.
A series of fanciful animal portraits, constructed using only the letters or signs for “Love” or “I love you” in 16 languages (or 18, depending how you count).
Style definitively trumps legibility here, whether the sentiment is expressed in English or Amharic, Thai, or American Sign Language. Even for the nine tongues that use non-Roman scripts, Cundy, a veteran typographer, chooses multiple typefaces and throws in so many swashes and dingbats that the animals are rarely recognizable and the words composing their bodies thoroughly disguised. Fortunately for readers, he identifies all of the creatures, scenarios, and languages in his accompanying narratives. Unfortunately, he also adds sometimes-daunting challenges, such as finding a tiny heart placed amid thousands of spiral ornaments on the Hebrew page or counting the hundreds of “Love letters” that make up the ornate flowers he assembles for English. Also unfortunately, his pronunciation guidelines are idiosyncratic—the umlaut in the Swedish “älskar” is rendered as a glottal stop following the pronoun “Jag,” for instance, while the short “a” in the French “L’amour” is given as is, but the same sound in the Italian “Amore” is “Ah.” Between a pretty if perfunctory world map that doubles as index and a complete tally of typefaces and ornaments, he concludes “Any way you say it, ‘I love you’ means the same thing to everyone!”
The sentiment is true even when obscured, as here, by ostentatious graphic design. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-56792-586-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Godine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
Regarding the responses of his little sister’s friend (see title) with amusement, the big-brother narrator models green...
Right along with a nosy young neighbor, children get an eyeful of a family’s sustainable lifestyle.
Regarding the responses of his little sister’s friend (see title) with amusement, the big-brother narrator models green living. He helps his parents plant a backyard garden and carry fresh produce from a farmers’ market rather than going to the grocery store. The family cuts the lawn with a hand mower, they hang up the wash rather than chucking it into a drier, they heat the family room with a wood stove and cool it with a ceiling fan rather than using more energy-intensive appliances. Looking skeptical but plainly beguiled, red-haired Sheila takes it all in, just as readers will. Smalley never delivers an explicit message here, and by showing rather than telling, she makes these practices look all the more appealing and doable—idealized though they are in Emery’s painted views of lush gardens, cozy indoor scenes and hardworking but ever-smiling adults and children.Pub Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-88448-326-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tilbury House
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
The voice may be adult, but the experience is recalled vividly enough to bring young readers along. (Picture book. 6-8)
Warm memories of visits to Grandpa’s house, laced with sentiment and sprinkled with Salish.
Campbell (Shi-shi-etko, also illustrated by LaFave, 2005) draws from childhood experiences to recapture the excitement of visiting her elder relative’s farm. With a gaggle of cousins, the young narrator explores grand-auntie’s old log yuxkn, climbs into the hayloft, feeds crabapples to a horse, gleefully pleases an irritated pig, rejects Grandpa’s pokerfaced offerings of “weird food”—“Don’t want no Rocky Mountain oysters. Don’t want liver or tripe, neither”—and ventures into the dusty storage room to see his World War II medals. LaFave’s cartoon illustrations, informally drawn and digitally colored in transparent washes, capture the exhilaration, sending four energetic youngsters in sneakers and short pants roaming through a succession of comfortably well-kept rural scenes. The lack of pronunciation guidance may cause non-Salish readers to stumble over some lines (“Our grand-aunties and grand-uncles call us kids schmém’i?t”), but the joy of being part of a large family gathering and romping about while the grownups chatter and laugh somewhere else will be familiar to a wide audience.
The voice may be adult, but the experience is recalled vividly enough to bring young readers along. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-55498-084-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2011
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