The beginning’s muddled, but the message is clear: Sing your heart out.
The moon has disappeared from the sky above Fulki’s village.
Around the same time, a group of elders declares that the villagers should stop singing. The reason, they say, is that singing attracts dangerous animals from the nearby jungle. When the singing stops and the moon is gone, the sounds of beasts grunting, growling, and bellowing make all the villagers quiver with fear—all the villagers, that is, except for Fulki. Fulki is secretly friends with a tiger, whom she regularly plays with in the jungle. When Fulki tells the tiger that the elders have outlawed singing to protect the villagers from wild beasts, the tiger is puzzled. After all, the tiger is both a beast and very well behaved. The tiger then confesses that he, also, has lost his moon and that every night he sings to try to bring it back. The tiger then teaches Fulki to sing for the moon. Their lesson leads to some wonderfully surprising results. The book’s lyrical text makes great use of devices like onomatopoeia, rendering the story a delight to read out loud. In the beginning, the plot is difficult to follow: It is unclear whether the elders outlaw singing because the moon has disappeared or because they are afraid of wild beasts or both. The fanciful illustrations loosely make use of Eastern motifs, but it is not clear where the book is set geographically. Human characters have brown skin and purple hair.
The beginning’s muddled, but the message is clear: Sing your heart out. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9979580-7-2
Page Count: 38
Publisher: Little Press Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
Disney art paired with an affirming message makes for a pleasant diversion.
Popular Disney characters guide children toward independence and empowerment.
Childhood involves taking small steps into enchanted lands of self-discovery. These forays lead to challenges but wonders, too. Who better to help kids along this path than celebrated Disney and Pixar icons, idolized courtesy of cinema and TV screens? Children sharing this book with grown-ups will likely be more thrilled at simply spotting and identifying cartoon favorites on these pages than listening to, let alone contemplating, the lengthy, somewhat overblown text, which may go over their heads. After all, very young children won’t yet know what lies ahead—or have figured out what they’ve achieved or will accomplish—when they’re on the brink of exciting life journeys. Recognizing and naming favorites—characters from Frozen, Up, Coco, and Moana—will boost many children’s self-esteem, one of this book’s credos. Some classic characters might be less familiar to today’s younger set, but they’re still powerfully appealing. Many words, set in larger type throughout, are eye-catching. The inimitable Disney illustrative and design style remains captivating and transcends generations. Though many characters from earlier Disney works are White (Alice, Peter, Pinocchio), those from more recent films reflect racial and ethnic diversity, among them Moana, who is Polynesian, and Coco’s Miguel, who is Mexican. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Disney art paired with an affirming message makes for a pleasant diversion. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781368077750
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Disney Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
Sweet.
A caregiving bear shares with its cub how love has defined their relationship from the first moment and through the years as the cub has grown.
With rhymes and a steady rhythm that are less singsong-y than similar books, Stansbie seems to have hit a sweet spot for this offering on the I-love-you-always shelf. Readers follow the adult and child as they share special moments together—a sunset, a splash in a pond, climbing a tree, a snuggle—and the adult tells the child that the love it feels has only grown. Stansbie also takes care not to put promises in the adult bear’s mouth that can’t be delivered, acknowledging that physical proximity is not always possible: “Wherever you are, / even when we’re apart… // I’ll love you forever / with all of my heart.” The large trim size helps the sweet illustrations shine; their emphasis is on the close relationship between parent and child. Shaped peekaboo windows offer glimpses of preceding and succeeding pages, images and text carefully placed to work whatever the context. While the die cuts on the interior pages will not hold up to rough handling, they do add whimsy and delight to the book as a whole: “And now that you’re bigger, / you make my heart sing. / My / beautiful / wonderful / magical / thing.” Those last three adjectives are positioned in leaf-shaped cutouts, the turn of the page revealing the roly-poly cub in a pile of leaves, three formed by the die-cuts. Opposite, three vignettes show the cub appreciating the “beautiful,” the “wonderful,” and the “magical.”
Sweet. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68412-910-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Silver Dolphin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
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