An absorbing, multifaceted visit to the city.
A day in the life of a metropolis.
“The city wakes up slowly” as the sun rises, but soon “the hustle and bustle” bring on multiple sights and chances to explore. Spreads focus on different-sized buildings, various modes of transportation, noisy versus quiet spaces, different jobs, entertainment opportunities, and green nature spaces. The final pages depict the city’s nightlife, with some people awake while others sleep, before the narrative comes full circle as the city wakes to a new day. The tour comes with invitations for reader participation (“What a lot of sounds! Which one do you think is the loudest?”) and a hearty dose of consumerism: Several pages show malls, boutiques, and produce markets. In a decidedly modern, abstract style à la Piet Mondrian, Lipniewska composes her cityscape and its inhabitants from many interlocking and overlapping geometric shapes in primary colors against stark white or gray backgrounds. She signals different races and ethnicities by variations in hair, clothes, head shapes, and skin tones (white, gray, blue, peach, green). The author encourages harmonious thinking by depicting crowds of visually heterogeneous people coexisting in the same place, such as enjoying the wares of a food truck: “The people are all very different / but they often like the same things.” There is much to visually revisit and discover anew on rereads.
An absorbing, multifaceted visit to the city. (Picture book. 2-9)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-7870-8031-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Button Books
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Chicken sexer? Breath odor evaluator? Cryptozoologist? Island caretaker? The choices dazzle! (Informational picture book....
From funeral clown to cheese sculptor, a tally of atypical trades.
This free-wheeling survey, framed as a visit to “The Great Hall of Jobs,” is designed to shake readers loose from simplistic notions of the world of work. Labarre opens with a generic sculpture gallery of, as she puts it, “The Classics”—doctor, dancer, farmer, athlete, chef, and the like—but quickly moves on, arranging busy cartoon figures by the dozen in kaleidoscopic arrays, with pithy captions describing each occupation. As changes of pace she also tucks in occasional challenges to match select workers (Las Vegas wedding minister, “ethical” hacker, motion-capture actor) with their distinctive tools or outfits. The actual chances of becoming, say, the queen’s warden of the swans or a professional mattress jumper, not to mention the nitty-gritty of physical or academic qualifications, income levels, and career paths, are left largely unspecified…but along with noting that new jobs are being invented all the time (as, in the illustration, museum workers wheel in a “vlogger” statue), the author closes with the perennial insight that it’s essential to love what you do and the millennial one that there’s nothing wrong with repeatedly switching horses midstream. The many adult figures and the gaggle of children (one in a wheelchair) visiting the “Hall” are diverse of feature, sex, and skin color.
Chicken sexer? Breath odor evaluator? Cryptozoologist? Island caretaker? The choices dazzle! (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1219-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
The poetry may be hit and miss, but the concept is terrific and the illustrations similarly sublime.
A compendium of poems designed to teach the concept of mixing...and, of course, to entertain.
Each of the 13 verses is illustrated with a two-page spread, featuring mostly children doing the mixing. "Glue" shows them combining flour and water to make glue for a classroom art project—"Then mix them, squish them, squoosh them, / 'til you get a sticky goo." In "Bubbles," a girl blocks her brother, who wants to give the dog a bath in the washing machine, advising instead that they "Rub and scrub with soapy water, watch the bubbles fly." "Concrete" shows a workman putting sand, gravel, water and cement into the big mixer, as well as a trio of children putting their prints in the new sidewalk (one gets his shoes stuck): "Concrete starts all soft and slushy, / then gets hard—that's clever." Other topics include a makeshift Martian costume for Halloween, cinnamon toast, a ragtag soccer team, salad dressing, mud, music and bedtime; that is, the routine of checking under the bed, a bedtime story, hug and kiss, etc. "Just one more glass of water, / and one more time to pee, / and one more check beneath the bed / for monsters—wait for me." A brief, helpful afterword suggests teaching possibilities provided by the text.
The poetry may be hit and miss, but the concept is terrific and the illustrations similarly sublime. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-55451-279-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
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