A pale, poorly conceived rumination on color; choose instead Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s Green (2012) or Joyce Sidman’s Red Sings...
A repeated spell-check fail and, more seriously, a discomfiting color choice make this visionary lyric a washout.
Bearing in two interior illustrations and on the rear cover a newspaper with the malaprop headline “Downpour leeches [sic] red,” a hedgehog splashes its way through a rain shower. He drops a sweet love note into the mailbox and then returns home for a cozy nap. Meanwhile, the rain has washed the color out of all the poppies, staining everything red, from a frog to the mailbox, the hedgehog and even the hair of a girl’s head and an old man’s beard. Martin’s incantatory free-verse text will raise disturbing associations even in readers who aren’t familiar with Peter Gabriel’s song “Red Rain,” the war poem “In Flanders Fields,” or mentions of rains and rivers of blood in Homer, the Book of Exodus and throughout literature. “Then, red, the roots, / Red, the ground, / Red, the stones sitting around. / Red, the grass underfoot. // Red, the beaks of curious birds. / Red, the field where sit the poppies.” Moreover, to sparely drawn illustrations done in thin gray wash and fine ink lines, Shaughnessy adds brushed swabs of a single shade of bright, fire engine red that looks artificial on her human figures and turns the feet, beaks and bodies of animals into bloody highlights. The hedgehog is last seen repainting the poppies, but that’s too little, too late.
A pale, poorly conceived rumination on color; choose instead Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s Green (2012) or Joyce Sidman’s Red Sings from Treetops (2009), illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62087-545-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An introduction to Venus that shows the planet at her most verbally and visually vivacious.
The solar system’s hottest diva struts her stuff.
The titular character’s claim that she’s the only goddess among the planetary gods may leave partisans of “Gaea” (technically not an official name, but still) feeling a little miffed. That aside, Venus still has plenty to crow about—from having higher surface temperatures than Mercury, to sporting a day that’s longer than her year, to spinning so the sun comes up in the west. Joining McAnulty’s other solar system soliloquies with the same engaging mix of facts and attitude (“Earth has clouds. I don’t…just have clouds. I’m smothered in them!”), Venus shines up from the page. She sports a proud expression on her broad face, whether hovering with windswept golden locks over a seashell like her Botticellian counterpart or floating in space, waving to her earthly and celestial fans with stubby limbs. Closing with a review quiz and a roundup of basic statistics, this animated planetary self-portrait will give young readers more reason than ever to pay proper attention to the brightest of our non-stellar astronomical neighbors.
An introduction to Venus that shows the planet at her most verbally and visually vivacious. (bibliography) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781250334473
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Odd Dot
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so...
A pro bono Twinkie of a book invites readers to fly off in a magic plane to bring clean water to our planet’s oceans, deserts, and brown children.
Following a confusingly phrased suggestion beneath a soft-focus world map to “touch the Earth. Now touch where you live,” a shake of the volume transforms it into a plane with eyes and feathered wings that flies with the press of a flat, gray “button” painted onto the page. Pressing like buttons along the journey releases a gush of fresh water from the ground—and later, illogically, provides a filtration device that changes water “from yucky to clean”—for thirsty groups of smiling, brown-skinned people. At other stops, a tap on the button will “help irrigate the desert,” and touching floating bottles and other debris in the ocean supposedly makes it all disappear so the fish can return. The 20 children Coh places on a globe toward the end are varied of skin tone, but three of the four young saviors she plants in the flier’s cockpit as audience stand-ins are white. The closing poem isn’t so openly parochial, though it seldom rises above vague feel-good sentiments: “Love the Earth, the moon and sun. / All the children can be one.”
“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so easy to clean the place up and give everyone a drink? (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5107-2083-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
