Happy birthday to a splendid book for new birthday boys and girls.
Scanlon delivers a sweet, rhyming text to tell the story of a little bunny’s birthday in Graegin’s debut picture book.
The succinct phrasing from page to page marks this as a text for very young children just learning about birthdays and birthday parties. The text takes a natural question-and-answer format as the birthday girl asks about each activity, and her mother offers loving replies. Scenes devoted to getting dressed up, greeting guests, celebrating with music and play, blowing out birthday-cake candles, opening gifts, taking pictures and looking back at past years provide an overview of the festivities. Perhaps taking a cue from the closing line’s reference to the girl as “sweet honey bun,” Graegin casts the unnamed central characters as a family of anthropomorphic bunnies, introducing a veritable peaceable kingdom of relatives and friends who come to celebrate on the special day. Graegin’s illustrations employ pencil-and-ink washes that are then digitally assembled and colored, and they mark her as an up-and-coming artist to watch, as they evoke a style akin to that of Peter McCarty, Laura McGee Kvasnosky and Polly Dunbar.
Happy birthday to a splendid book for new birthday boys and girls. (Picture book. 1-4)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0287-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Cuddle up with this cheery board book to assure your babies that they too are loved.
Parental love has never been expressed so sweetly and believably.
In this sunny, bright world there is no ambivalence, much less postpartum depression—only positive possibilities. Church offers a model of good parenting, expressing the universal hopes all parents have for their children, that they “see the joy that life can bring.” Her focus is always on the child. The narrator mother is shown only at the very beginning, cuddling her newborn and lifting a sock-clad toddler above her head. On two other pages readers see the mother's hands reaching out to guide and encourage as the baby begins to crawl, stand, and run. The first-person narration might be confusing if the book is shared by a caregiver other than a mother. Toddlers will join in on the reassuring refrain “I will love you forever.” The pants-clad child is shown with tightly curled reddish-brown hair and light brown skin. The mother has a slightly lighter skin tone and straight hair. A faithful brown dog and well-loved teddy bear accompany the child on almost every page.
Cuddle up with this cheery board book to assure your babies that they too are loved. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-94200-3
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Calm and bright.
A reindeer introduces its calf to the meaning of Christmas.
The reindeer and calf depicted on the book’s cover move through a winter wonderland of snowy mountains and forests. Certain elements of the illustrations (the reindeers’ hides, snowy ground, and fir-tree branches and bark) have a soft visual texture while others (the distant mountains, the changing sky, the sun and stars) have a flat smoothness to them. These contrasting visual effects combine to create a sense of peaceful balance and perspective in the scenes. The accompanying rhyming verse can be read as the voice of the adult reindeer telling its calf about Christmastime, focusing on emotions and atmosphere rather than religious or secular traditions associated with the holiday. For example, there are no references to the Nativity, and Santa never makes an appearance. One verse does mention gift giving—“Christmas is giving / gifts under the tree / and time spent together, / just you and me”—but the illustration that goes along with it doesn’t anthropomorphize the reindeer to show them exchanging presents. Instead, they’re depicted nuzzling noses in a forest of snow-covered fir trees.
Calm and bright. (Picture book. 1-4)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1545-8
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Templar/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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