Interested teachers and parents will want to use this with young children as one way to introduce children to a way of life...
A quietly informative book takes readers through one idealized day in a Burmese village, produced with a text in English and the gracefully written Burmese language.
Aye Aye narrates the simple text. The young girl describes her morning routine and then accompanies her nurse mother to the hospital; there is no school today. Her brother goes to fish with his father, demonstrating gender-specific activities. It’s too bad school is not included, as a look at it might have made the text a bit more nuanced. Burma (officially named Myanmar in 1989, hence the two names) was isolated from 1962 until 2010, when its military government began allowing more freedoms. This is explained in an afterword, written for an older audience. A picture of the famous political figure, Aung San Suu Kyi, appears on the Buddhist wall altar and is described only in the afterword. Not a political book, the emphasis is on the everyday similarities of children’s lives the world over, albeit with a focus on specific cultural traditions, here Theravada Buddhism, and the concept of metta, loving-kindness. Detailed collages of paper, woven straw, photographs and other materials highlight the differences between urban and rural life.
Interested teachers and parents will want to use this with young children as one way to introduce children to a way of life that has compassion at its heart. (glossary) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: July 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-935874-20-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Satya House
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the...
An all-zombie-all-the-time zombiefest, featuring a bunch of grade-school kids, including protagonist Stink and his happy comrades.
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the streets in the time-honored stiff-armed, stiff-legged fashion. McDonald signals her intent on page one: “Stink and Webster were playing Attack of the Knitting Needle Zombies when Fred Zombie’s eye fell off and rolled across the floor.” The farce is as broad as the Atlantic, with enough spookiness just below the surface to provide the all-important shivers. Accompanied by Reynolds’ drawings—dozens of scene-setting gems with good, creepy living dead—McDonald shapes chapters around zombie motifs: making zombie costumes, eating zombie fare at school, reading zombie books each other to reach the one-million-minutes-of-reading challenge. When the zombie walk happens, it delivers solid zombie awfulness. McDonald’s feel-good tone is deeply encouraging for readers to get up and do this for themselves because it looks like so much darned fun, while the sub-message—that reading grows “strong hearts and minds,” as well as teeth and bones—is enough of a vital interest to the story line to be taken at face value.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5692-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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