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GREEN CAT

Name: GREEN CAT
Author: Dayal Kaur Khalsa
ISBN: 0-88776-586-6

by Dayal Kaur Khalsa & illustrated by Dayal Kaur Khalsa ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 2002

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Tom and Lynn share a room, and each feels crowded by the other. Children will giggle at that, because the room the siblings share seems huge and spacious, occupied only by two beds that face each other. One night, a Green Cat—an upright, two-legged sort of fellow—appears, and begins to fill the room, first with all the accoutrements for the children’s favorite meal of toast: toast, kitchen table and chairs, napkins, plates, honey. But he also includes a bale of hay and a pig, and two packages of gum. The story (and the rhyming) goes on: geese in party hats, the Mona Lisa, a rainbow, numerous animals, and confetti (included, no doubt, to rhyme with spaghetti). Lynn and Tom huddle in a corner, muttering once again for more room, so Green Cat removes all of it, piece by piece. It is so empty when he’s done that the siblings “tiptoed down the stairs, / And brought back up the kitchen chairs.” Khalsa died in 1989; this charmingly surreal, “newly discovered” story takes its origins from folktale. Text is white on pea-green; the images, framed on each page, are done in flat areas of saturated color. The accretion of small objects builds up—pointillism crossed with mosaic—so children can find them all and then watch them disappear. Very satisfying. (Picture book. 5-8)

Pub Date: April 8, 2002

ISBN: 0-88776-586-6

Page Count: 24

Publisher: Tundra Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS

- BOOK REVIEW
THE SNOW CAT
by Dayal Kaur Khalsa & translated by Dayal Kaur Khalsa

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A BIKE LIKE SERGIO'S

by Maribeth Boelts ; illustrated by Noah Z. Jones ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 4, 2016

Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...

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Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.

This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.

Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)

Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Candlewick

Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
THE PURPLE PUFFY COAT
by Maribeth Boelts ; illustrated by Daniel Duncan

- BOOK REVIEW
KAIA AND THE BEES
by Maribeth Boelts ; illustrated by Angela Dominguez

- BOOK REVIEW
HAPPY LIKE SOCCER
by Maribeth Boelts & illustrated by Lauren Castillo

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TRASHY TOWN

by Andrea Zimmerman & David Clemesha ; illustrated by Dan Yaccarino ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 30, 1999

Part of a spate of books intent on bringing the garbage collectors in children’s lives a little closer, this almost matches...

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Listeners will quickly take up the percussive chorus—“Dump it in, smash it down, drive around the Trashy town! Is the trash truck full yet? NO”—as they follow burly Mr. Gilly, the garbage collector, on his rounds from park to pizza parlor and beyond.

Flinging cans and baskets around with ease, Mr. Gilly dances happily through streetscapes depicted with loud colors and large, blocky shapes; after a climactic visit to the dump, he roars home for a sudsy bath.

Part of a spate of books intent on bringing the garbage collectors in children’s lives a little closer, this almost matches Eve Merriam’s Bam Bam Bam (1995), also illustrated by Yaccarino, for sheer verbal and visual volume. (Picture book. 5-7)