Mystifying and ultimately uplifting, this book challenges all of us to seek out the dizzying scope of love.
Startling collages of torn photos, cut paper and calligraphy seek to describe love’s many forms and feelings through comparisons found in nature.
Ripped photographs and Matisse-like figures and shapes converge, overlap and cohere to create stirring compositions that call for scrutiny. Young readers might feel a bit disoriented by jagged, kaleidoscopic artwork, as dizzying and confounding as love itself. Fold-out panels contribute to an ongoing sense of playful mystery that dances across these spreads depicting nature's swirls, undulations and power. Thunderstorms, waves, rain storms, clouds, fire and forests surge. Young’s poetry, both puzzling and poignant, follows the flow of the pictures, dragging eyes across the illustrations’ challenging, serried landscape. Some lines seem to speak to a lover rather than a child, leaving little readers out. “Should you be a great forest, I’ll caress your branches and make you sway”; “Should you be a gentle wave, I’ll wait for you to lap my shores.” The aching vulnerability and deep-seated love evident in every line, however, echoes the unabashed love children transmit to the world (their parents, friends, teachers, coaches) around them. An author’s note and the poem printed again in its entirety provide clarity at the book’s close.
Mystifying and ultimately uplifting, this book challenges all of us to seek out the dizzying scope of love. (Picture book. 10 & up)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-23089-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
The inevitable go-to for Percy’s legions of fans who want the stories behind his stories.
Percy Jackson takes a break from adventuring to serve up the Greek gods like flapjacks at a church breakfast.
Percy is on form as he debriefs readers concerning Chaos, Gaea, Ouranos and Pontus, Dionysus, Ariadne and Persephone, all in his dude’s patter: “He’d forgotten how beautiful Gaea could be when she wasn’t all yelling up in his face.” Here they are, all 12 Olympians, plus many various offspring and associates: the gold standard of dysfunctional families, whom Percy plays like a lute, sometimes lyrically, sometimes with a more sardonic air. Percy’s gift, which is no great secret, is to breathe new life into the gods. Closest attention is paid to the Olympians, but Riordan has a sure touch when it comes to fitting much into a small space—as does Rocco’s artwork, which smokes and writhes on the page as if hit by lightning—so readers will also meet Makaria, “goddess of blessed peaceful deaths,” and the Theban Teiresias, who accidentally sees Athena bathing. She blinds him but also gives him the ability to understand the language of birds. The atmosphere crackles and then dissolves, again and again: “He could even send the Furies after living people if they committed a truly horrific crime—like killing a family member, desecrating a temple, or singing Journey songs on karaoke night.”
The inevitable go-to for Percy’s legions of fans who want the stories behind his stories. (Mythology. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-8364-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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Tales that “lay out your options for painful and interesting ways to die.” And to live.
In a similarly hefty companion to Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods (2014), the most voluble of Poseidon’s many sons dishes on a dozen more ancient relatives and fellow demigods.
Riordan averts his young yarn spinner’s eyes from the sex but not the stupidity, violence, malice, or bad choices that drive so many of the old tales. He leavens full, refreshingly tart accounts of the ups and downs of such higher-profile heroes as Theseus, Orpheus, Hercules, and Jason with the lesser-known but often equally awesome exploits of such butt-kicking ladies as Atalanta, Otrera (the first Amazon), and lion-wrestling Cyrene. In thought-provoking contrast, Psyche comes off as no less heroic, even though her story is less about general slaughter than the tough “Iron Housewives quests” Aphrodite forces her to undertake to rescue her beloved Eros. Furthermore, along with snarky chapter heads (“Phaethon Fails Driver’s Ed”), the contemporary labor includes references to Jay-Z, Apple Maps, god-to-god texting, and the like—not to mention the way the narrator makes fun of hard-to-pronounce names and points up such character flaws as ADHD (Theseus) and anger management issues (Hercules). The breezy treatment effectively blows off at least some of the dust obscuring the timeless themes in each hero’s career. In Rocco’s melodramatically murky illustrations, men and women alike display rippling thews and plenty of skin as they battle ravening monsters.
Tales that “lay out your options for painful and interesting ways to die.” And to live. (maps, index) (Mythology. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4231-8365-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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