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LOVE IS

A pretty, hardcover greeting card.

A cute-as-a-button moppet adopts, raises, and loves a lost little duckling.

Keane’s digital illustrations have the loose, line-and-wash, mid-20th-century look of Marc Simont or Hilary Knight, with the exception of their central character, a thoroughly modern brown-skinned girl with two black pom-pom pigtails. When the little, yellow duckling follows a butterfly out of the park, the protagonist finds it and brings it to her well-appointed row house (where she apparently lives alone, as there’s no sign of an adult anywhere). She nurtures it through night feedings, plays with it inside, and, recognizing it’s time to say goodbye, takes it back to the park, where it swims away. It’s a 32-page expansion of the old poster platitude, “If you love something, let it go,” and (spoiler alert) the duckling does indeed come back the following spring, now grown and with a brood of its own. Unfortunately, the text is simply a series of soppy, frequently nonsensical “Love is” statements entirely in line with the platitude. “Love is holding something fragile, tiny wings and downy head. / Love is noisy midnight feedings, shoe box right beside the bed.” Having evidently decided to sacrifice sense to scansion and rhyme, Adams mystifyingly and periodically abandons that scansion, but never does she let go of the treacly sentiment. The charming illustrations mark Keane as one to watch, with her admirable command of line, composition, and narrative possibility.

A pretty, hardcover greeting card. (Picture book. 3-5)

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-4521-3997-5

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Chronicle Books

Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017

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GOOD NIGHT OWL

A funny tale about stress and an ever upping ante, with a comforting end.

Something is preventing Owl from falling asleep.

Owl leans back against his white pillow and headboard. “Squeek!” says something underneath the bed. Owl’s never heard that sound before, so he fastens his pink bathrobe and answers the front door. Nobody. It must be the wind; back to bed. Bidding himself goodnight, he climbs into bed—and hears the noise again. Time after time, he pops out of bed seeking the squeaker. Is it in the cupboard? He empties the shelves. Under the floor? He pulls up his floorboards. As Owl’s actions ratchet up—he destroys the roof and smashes the walls, all in search of the squeak—so does his anxiety. Not until he hunkers down in bed under the night sky (his bed is now outdoors, because the house’s roof and walls are gone), frantically clutching his pillow, does he see what readers have seen all along: a small, gray mouse. In simple illustrations with black outlines, textured coloring, and foreshortened perspective, Pizzoli plays mischievously with mouse placement. Sometimes the mouse is behind Owl or just out of his sightline; other times, the mouse is on a solid, orange-colored page across the spread from Owl, which removes him from Owl’s scene in a rather postmodern manner. Is the mouse toying with Owl? Who knows?

A funny tale about stress and an ever upping ante, with a comforting end. (Picture book. 3-5)

Pub Date: April 19, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4847-1275-7

Page Count: 48

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion

Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016

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WITH ALL MY HEART

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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