Despite textual issues, this window into process will be welcomed in the current maker environment.
This picture-book debut by a children’s entertainer with a focus on literacy features a child-and-mother bunny pair touring a collective studio space.
The furry white youngster, sporting a pink-and-white–striped shirt and black skirt, eagerly follows the cat with the keys who guides them. Activities range from photography and dance to painting and singing. Some of the spaces, such as the ceramics room and recording studio, offer hands-on opportunities. Cheerful, busy silk-screened scenes are unified by a limited palette in the turquoise, coral, and yellow families. Black adds definition and contrast. An artistic ladybug awaits discovery in each spread. Rhyming verses (reminiscent of the author’s songs) are presented in a variety of voices: first- or third-person plural, first-person singular, second-person singular, etc., with two to four lines per page. While “the studio” is understood to be the book’s subject, the use of mixed viewpoints and short phrases occasionally muddles meaning and makes for some awkward textual transitions that are more noticeable than they might be in a song. For instance, after phrases that dwell on “a habitat for makers,” the turned page reads: “Perhaps an animator / Or an actor with a part. / No matter who, they’re free to do / Whatever’s in their hearts.” Ultimately, listeners will enjoy seeing the protagonist find a personal space for creation.
Despite textual issues, this window into process will be welcomed in the current maker environment. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7352-6485-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A lively celebration of music and expressive dance.
The beat is all around her when a girl takes a walk in the park with her mother.
On a lovely summer day, a young African-American girl in a bright pink sundress and matching sneakers sees, smells, sings, claps and snaps her fingers to an internal rhythm. As a boom box plays its song and a drummer taps his beat, neighborhood children join her in an energetic, pulsating dance culminating in a rousing musical parade. Schofield-Morrison’s brief text has a shout-it-out element as each spread resounds with a two-word phrase: “I shook a rhythm with my hips. /SHAKE SHAKE”; “I tapped the rhythm with my toes. / TIP TAP.” Morrison’s full-bleed, textured oil paintings capture the joy of a mother and daughter in an urban park surrounded by musicians, food vendors and many exuberant children. Read this aloud with music playing loudly—not in the background. Morrison is a Coretta Scott King/New Talent Award winner, and this is a fine debut for his wife in their first collaboration.
A lively celebration of music and expressive dance. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: June 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61963-178-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
It’s a bit hard to dance, or count, to this beat.
Dinos that love to move and groove get children counting from one to 10—and perhaps moving to the beat.
Beginning with a solo bop by a female dino (she has eyelashes, doncha know), the dinosaur dance party begins. Each turn of the page adds another dino and a change in the dance genre: waltz, country line dancing, disco, limbo, square dancing, hip-hop, and swing. As the party would be incomplete without the moonwalk, the T. Rex does the honors…and once they are beyond their initial panic at his appearance, the onlookers cheer wildly. The repeated refrain on each spread allows for audience participation, though it doesn’t easily trip off the tongue: “They hear a swish. / What’s this? / One more? / One more dino on the floor.” Some of the prehistoric beasts are easily identifiable—pterodactyl, ankylosaurus, triceratops—but others will be known only to the dino-obsessed; none are identified, other than T-Rex. Packed spreads filled with psychedelically colored dinos sporting blocks of color, stripes, or polka dots (and infectious looks of joy) make identification even more difficult, to say nothing of counting them. Indeed, this fails as a counting primer: there are extra animals (and sometimes a grumpy T-Rex) in the backgrounds, and the next dino to join the party pokes its head into the frame on the page before. Besides all that, most kids won’t get the dance references.
It’s a bit hard to dance, or count, to this beat. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8075-1598-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
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