Little eyes will like the stimulating visuals. Skip the words.
Fine-arts masterpieces presented to showcase properties and possibilities of color.
Reproductions shine on the page, though no titles or artist credits appear until the backmatter. František Kupka’s Disks of Newton is a colorful explosion; Jasper Johns’ Nines combines simplicity with nuance in a three-primary design. However, Baill’s definitions and explanations sink the project. Peter Paone’s Someone’s Topiary and Victor Gabriel Gilbert’s Poppies in a Field both effectively demonstrate exciting ways that red and green can offset and enhance each other, but the crucial term complementary is missing, as are the other two complementary pairs (yellow/purple, orange/blue). Displaying silver and gold, the text claims that “shimmery shades that are perfectly polished are called metallic”—but any hue can shimmer, depending on material and light; those two are metallic because they’re metal, not because they’re shiny. The explanation that two primaries mix to make each secondary receives a mere Venn diagram as demonstration. Two reddish-brown goldfish by Roy Lichtenstein are nowhere near a primary red but are absurdly called “rosy” and “primary.” Minuscule print and thumbnails arranged in columns (not rows) in the backmatter demand extra effort to identify the works. A stumbling author’s note mentions the Black Lives Matter movement because “privilege and injustice [are] inherent in skin color,” the word inherent implying that racial justice is impossible and that racism’s caused by literal hue.
Little eyes will like the stimulating visuals. Skip the words. (project ideas, works cited) (Informational picture book. 2-6)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-61689-966-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Quiet, simple, and sweet.
A bilingual Spanish/English spatial-awareness concept book.
Herrera—U.S. poet laureate from 2015 to 2017—introduces the concept of proximity in a series of simple statements that start with a child getting ready to go out and end with the child approaching a friend’s house. The statements are presented first in Spanish followed by italicized English, effectively normalizing the Spanish. “Mi cuarto está cerca de la cocina. / My bedroom is close to the kitchen.” Gómez’s color-saturated illustrations portray a child in a jaunty striped T-shirt and two cute pigtails proceeding from bedroom to kitchen to door, daisies, apple tree, horses, and, finally, the friend’s house. By breaking up the journey into incremental “cerca / close” steps the author brings the close friendship into focus. Companion volume Lejos / Far starts with the same two characters under a lemon tree, with the friend—now the main character—looking back to the house in the distance. This time the emphasis is on places that are far: from lemon tree to house, city, ocean, and mountains. As the child walks in the mountains holding a caregiver’s hand, clouds can be seen far above, and further than that is the sun: “El sol brilla sobre mí. / The sun shines over me.” Both the children and the adult have brown skin and black hair.
Quiet, simple, and sweet. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9062-5
Page Count: 14
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Make space on the bookshelf for this engaging title.
Onomatopoeic words representing city sounds invite children to guess what they are.
A completely black double-page spread with the words “Did you hear that?” printed in white starts the book and sets the tone. There will be no visual cues here, just an array of onomatopoeic words that prompt guesses. Some are easy: “Honk,” “vroom,” “beep,” and “zoom” clearly lead to cars. But others, such as “hustle,” “bustle,” “march,” “talk,” “walk,” and “go,” will make them think a little more before they turn the page to learn that it’s a group of lively pedestrians. Grown-ups reading with young children can help the game—and have fun along the way—by reading expressively, aided by the printing of key words in colored type. While the pages with the clues present colorful words simply set against a plain white background, the pages with the answers offer an explosion of bright, vibrant, and stylized mixed-media images portraying a diverse cast of city dwellers. Companion volume Rumble, Rumble, Grumble, Grumble shares the same presentation and concept, but the sounds here are related to nature. Both books have plenty of vocabulary-building heft, adding value to the guessing game: “screeching,” “shrieking,” and “hissing,” to name a few. The pages are made of a tear-resistant substance, making these good choices to take toddlers from board books to picture books.
Make space on the bookshelf for this engaging title. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4867-1657-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Flowerpot Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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