Share this one with kids who have very particular tastes.
On his first day of school, a boy uses his favorite thing in the world to make new friends.
Teddy loves three things: his red cape, his yellow rain boots, and spaghetti, which he could eat all day. Teddy isn’t exactly finicky; he likes “spaghetti with red sauce and meatballs…with white sauce with clams…or even with eggs and bacon!” But today the ordinarily happy kid is feeling a bit unnerved: It’s his first day of school. Mom encourages him to just be himself, and by doing so, he quickly gains new friends. But at lunch, the school bully approaches, hurling the titular epithet. Teddy freezes, but his new friends don’t; they are full of compliments for Teddy’s warm, fabulous spaghetti lunch. Teddy invites them to dig in—there’s plenty. And when Bryan the bully asks in a whisper if he might have some, Teddy even shares with him and tells him he loves his new nickname. In Andriani’s cartoon illustrations, the expressive faces and, appropriately, the spaghetti are especial delights. Teddy and his mother have light skin; his classroom is diverse. This mother-daughter collaboration is sweet but slight and unrealistic. With food allergies on the rise, many schools have banned food sharing, and the ease with which the kids deal with the bully is unbelievable. Moreover, while food-shaming is a depressingly common phenomenon, it is rarely the white kid with spaghetti and marinara sauce who is the target.
Share this one with kids who have very particular tastes. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-291542-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
A sweet and well-meaning lesson in personification and metaphor, but this picture book fails to shine.
The sun sends the world and its inhabitants warm thoughts for peace, unity, and positivity.
A smiling sun shines down on each double-page spread, just as the moon did in Storms and Pavlović’s previous book, Moon Wishes (2019). Using the refrain “if I were the sun,” the narrator describes the sun’s movement from sunrise to sunset throughout the seasons of the year. The sun is personified as a serene explorer, muse, and comforter who lovingly wakes the world with “a gentle morning song” and ends each day with peaceful rest. In between rising and setting, the sun explores “every corner of this wondrous earth.” Alas, the narrative is disappointingly disjointed—the sun flits among pages that depict African wildlife, a school of smiling fish swimming up toward the sun, and a bear fishing in a river. Looking at the world from the sun’s point of view, the narrator is better able to “delight in all our differences”—the accompanying illustration shows 11 disparate birds perched in the same tree. Meanwhile, human diversity is portrayed on other pages: Happy children—some with brown skin, others with pink skin—make snow angels; a man using a wheelchair sits at a harvest table; and an Asian-presenting man wearing a conical hat walks across marshland. Pavlović’s loose mixed-media, colored-pencil, and ink illustrations use warm colors and are as consistently uplifting as Storms’ pretty but desultory word pictures. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A sweet and well-meaning lesson in personification and metaphor, but this picture book fails to shine. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-77306-450-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
A full-hearted valentine.
A soaring panegyric to elementary school as a communal place to learn and grow.
“This is a kid,” Schu begins. “This is a kid in a class. This is a class in a hall….” If that class—possibly second graders, though they could be a year to either side of that—numbers only about a dozen in Jamison’s bright paintings, it makes up for that in diversity, with shiny faces of variously brown or olive complexion well outnumbering paler ones; one child using a wheelchair; and at least two who appear to be Asian. (The adult staff is likewise racially diverse.) The children are individualized in the art, but the author’s narrative is addressed more to an older set of readers as it runs almost entirely to collective nouns and abstract concepts: “We share. We help. / This is a community, growing.” Younger audiences will zero in on the pictures, which depict easily recognizable scenes of both individual and collective learning and play, with adults and classmates always on hand to help out or join in. Signs of conflict are unrealistically absent, but an occasional downcast look does add a bit of nuance to the general air of eager positivity on display. A sad face at an apartment window with a comment that “[s]ometimes something happens, and we can’t all be together” can be interpreted as an oblique reference to pandemic closings, but the central message here is that school is a physical space, not a virtual one, where learning and community happen. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A full-hearted valentine. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0458-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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