Thought-provoking questions, fun activities, and insightful imagery mark this book as one that may be particularly useful in...
Debut author/illustrator Harmony, an Australian psychiatrist, offers children a way to identify their anger and lessons on how to control it in this rhyming, series-opening picture book.
Young Al has a dragon in his pocket. When the boy gets angry, he says, Kanga, the dragon, “breathes fire into my head and belly”—a wonderful way to describe how fuzzy one’s thinking can get and how uncomfortable one’s stomach can feel when anger takes over. When people don’t listen to Al, he stomps and screams. When his brother steals his candy or his sister cheats at a game, he blows up, and when his parents tell him “no” or he keeps making the same mistake on his homework, Kanga rears his (actually quite cute) head. After his sister breaks down in tears and his parents yell at him because of his anger, however, he feels contrite: “I forget what it’s like for those close by / When I explode, and feel my brain will fry.” He apologizes and decides to make a change, pledging to always count to 10 before he reacts in anger. Once Al gets control of his dragon, the book concludes with coloring and drawing pages and a word search for young, independent readers as well as notes for parents that offer concise steps to help kids deal with anger: “Leave,” “Breathe,” and “Speak.” Overall, the concepts and the visualization of the dragon, are excellent and will appeal to readers who have trouble coping with emotional challenges. The illustrations are simplistic, and characters’ proportions are more free-form than lifelike, but the book’s seek-and-find aspect, which encourages children to locate Kanga on each page, will delight readers on the younger end of its target audience. However, the rhyme scheme, though consistent, never achieves an easy flow: “Meet my pet dragon, Kanga, he lives in my pocket. / He sticks out his head when I’m angry as a rocket.” Other parts of the text are spot-on, though; for example, Al compares his homework frustrations to “sinking in a lake,” because, despite his hard work, he never seems to progress.
Thought-provoking questions, fun activities, and insightful imagery mark this book as one that may be particularly useful in schools.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-925420-00-5
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Nil
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift.
A paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere.
This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. Makes sense: aren’t parents and other close family members children’s first teachers? This duality suggests that the book might be best shared one-on-one between a nostalgic adult and a child who’s developed some self-confidence, having learned a thing or two from a parent, grandparent, older relative, or classroom instructor.
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943200-08-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Compendium
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
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