Empathetic and eminently useful.
A child-friendly introduction to COVID-19.
The co-authors calmly and gently walk children through coronavirus basics, from how it’s spread to how it’s changed their lives and the lives of those around them. They hew mostly to colloquial terms rather than medical jargon, referring to respiratory virus particles as “[germs that] float through the air in tiny drops of water,” for instance, but when necessary, important vocabulary is introduced and defined within the narrative. Getting better is emphasized, as is the fact that most cases of COVID-19 are relatively mild, but the co-authors do not dodge the truth: “Sometimes even [a ventilator] might not be enough to help them get better, and if that happens, then sadly they might die.” Readers are directly enlisted to prevent this with exhortations to wash hands frequently, even after disposing of a tissue, “because the coronavirus lives in your snot.” To this sober, frank narrative Scheffler adds cartoon vignettes, striking a delicate balance between his trademark goofiness and the gravity of the circumstances. While the term “social distancing” is never introduced, the concept is, along with explanations of why readers may not visit relatives in person (“Hi, Granny,” one brown-skinned child says, waving to a face on the computer screen) or go to school (two white children evince diametrically opposed reactions). Scheffler’s cast is thoughtfully diverse, including several characters with visible disabilities and one woman who covers her hair. The book’s British origins can be seen in the absence of masks among the general population when in public, so readers in regions where they have been adopted may need further explanation about local rules or norms. The book is available as a free PDF download from the publisher. It is laid out in double-page spreads, which display with forbiddingly small type on a tablet, but on a desktop computer legibility is decent at 60% of original size. Links to resources, mostly U.S.–based, appear in the backmatter.
Empathetic and eminently useful. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1921-0
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
A hilarious “toot salute” to the gas we pass.
Continuing her valiant efforts to embrace the world’s less lovable contents from spiders and math to garbage and germs, Barton offers a new addition to her series.
Though the author/illustrator opens with a claim that farts have existed as long as humans—a howler she herself contradicts when she gets to introducing the far more ancient and “famously flatulent” termite—and even doubles down later with a similarly specious declaration about digestive system microbes, her overall assertion that passing gas is hilarious as well as natural and healthy is inarguable. After all, she notes, the oldest joke on record, going back nearly 4,000 years, is fart-related (she doesn’t repeat it, alas). The illustrations reinforce both themes; between endpapers featuring visual representations of nearly two dozen distinctive poots, each labeled with a synonym for the act, a serious young lecturer provides a simple discourse on the causes and contents of farts as well as about animals that also produce them or, like sloths and birds, don’t. The narrator is frequently derailed by a pesky brother’s wisecracks and billowing clouds of noxiously hued funk. In the end, though, both tan-skinned children wind up “feeling the fart love,” and perhaps readers will, too. Other human figures in the art are racially diverse, and one uses a wheelchair.
A hilarious “toot salute” to the gas we pass. (fascinating facts on flatulence, further resources) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593693773
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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