Delectable treats plus family history make this a sweet story to share.
Zunon writes and illustrates an ode to her grandfather, a cacao worker in the Ivory Coast, through the eyes of a young girl.
As they bake their favorite chocolate cake for her birthday, the girl’s father tells her that chocolate is a gift from farmers like her grandpa, and she asks him to tell her about Grandpa Cacao again. As they mix their cake batter, the pictures show her father’s homeland, “where the air breathes hot and damp, thick with stories and music and the languages of people from tiny villages and big cities.” He describes the hard work Grandpa Cacao did on the farm, carrying heavy loads, picking ripe fruit, scooping out the cacao pods, spreading them out to dry. As they put their cake in the oven, the little girl wonders what special treat her mother is bringing home for her birthday. When the doorbell rings, she is thrilled to meet the best surprise ever. Zunon’s familiar paint-and-collage illustrations use glowing brown faces and natural tones in the girl’s story and white, screen-printed human figures against painted backgrounds in the father’s story set in the Ivory Coast. The story is replete with sensory details, and two spreads of backmatter round out the informational content, including maps, history, and a cake recipe.
Delectable treats plus family history make this a sweet story to share. (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: May 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68119-640-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Sage, soothing ideas for a busy, loud, sometimes-divisive world.
In an inviting picture book, Chelsea and Hillary Clinton share personal revelations on how gardening with a grandmother, a mother, and children shapes and nurtures a love and respect for nature, beauty, and a general philosophy for life.
Grandma Dorothy, the former senator, secretary of state, and presidential candidate’s mother, loved gardens, appreciating the multiple benefits they yielded for herself and her family. The Clinton women reminisce about their beloved forebear and all she taught them in a color-coded, alternating text, blue for Chelsea and green for Hillary. Via brief yet explicit remembrances, they share what they learned, observed, and most of all enjoyed in gardens with her. Each double-page spread culminates in a declarative statement set in italicized red text invoking Dorothy’s wise words. Gardens can be many things: places for celebration, discovery and learning, vehicles for teaching responsibility in creating beauty, home to wildlife large and small, a place to share stories and develop memories. Though operating from very personal experience rooted in class privilege, the mother-daughter duo mostly succeeds in imparting a universally significant message: Whether visiting a public garden or working in the backyard, generations can cultivate a lasting bond. Lemniscates uses an appropriately floral palette to evoke the gardens explored by these three white women. A Spanish edition, Los jardines de la abuela, publishes simultaneously; Teresa Mlawer’s translation is fluid and pleasing, in at least one case improving on the original.
Sage, soothing ideas for a busy, loud, sometimes-divisive world. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11535-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
An exceptional ode to the music and art of the loom.
Intelligent rhymes and handsome folk-art patterns spin a global story of weaving through the millennia.
The narrative opens as an adult in a long black dress invites a child clothed in red (both are brown-skinned and blue-haired) to listen to the loom: “Clack. Clack. / Swish— / PULL BACK. / Bobbin and heddle, / foot pedal, no slack.” (Specialized vocabulary is defined and illustrated in a glossary.) The characters’ presence throughout, along with that of a playful blue cat, adds a personal dimension. Describing the loom’s “song” (“skeins of history / unfurled across the room…”), the text is told in first person, presented in an ABCB rhyme scheme with an appropriately lilting rhythm. A limited but vibrant gouache palette of black, blue, orange/rust/brown, forest green, and white depicts weavers throughout history and cultures—we see portrayals of the craft on Chinese porcelain, Egyptian pottery, Moorish carpets, and more. Delicate spot line art contrasts with rich color on double-page spreads for a pleasing variety. Author and artist convey technical and functional information about weaving as well as the sense of community experienced by weavers and the stories and spirit incorporated into their pieces. Ending in the third person plural, Howes speaks of the beauty, purpose, and strength of the textiles and of those who create and appreciate them: “We all are tapestries… / lifelines interlacing….” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An exceptional ode to the music and art of the loom. (author’s and illustrator’s notes, historical and cultural information on weaving) (Informational picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7806-6
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
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