In a long, introspective letter to the sea that surrounds his island, a Cuban lad reflects on his inner and outer lives. Feeling sometimes as if everyone is leaving for “El Norte,” 12-year-old Enrique notes the steady departures of relatives and acquaintances against a backdrop of school days, family visits and walks along the beach. The prose is often lyrical; on the relationship between his country and the United States, for instance, he writes: “There’s so much distance between us. So much forgetting, so many good-byes. So much silence because of words never said. So many tears never cried and laughter never heard.” On the other hand, because he relates everything from expressions of his growing sense of isolation to multiple encounters with bandits and sharks in the same level voice, there’s a detached quality to his narrative that is likely to leave most readers unengaged. Not as intensely felt as such similar monologues as the author’s Letters from Alain (2008) or Teresa Cardenas’s Letters to My Mother (2006), this still has value for its focus on the ones who stay behind. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-88899-797-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
Going produce shopping with Freymann and Elffers is more of a casting call than a trip to the supermarket, for they use fruits and vegetables to display a wide range of emotions. Children and their keepers will be astonished to discover how closely the wrinkles, bends, and creases in produce can mimic human feelings. The text is fairly direct, asking questions to make children think about their emotions: “When you’re angry, do you pout? Whine? Cry? Scream? Shout?” The ridges of a red pepper, with eyes of dried peas, convey the pout, while other fruit demonstrate the rest of the query. These full-color photographs communicate most of the information; even preschoolers will be able to tell a happy orange from a glum one, and adults will smile to see an onion crying. The organic qualities of the produce are used to charming advantage, e.g., the bend of a green pepper makes the perfect overbearing profile of a bully, while a hollowed-out orange gives just the right depth to an opened-mouthed howl. Fun, and useful—what child would not be encouraged to talk about being shy when there is a cantaloupe that admits to exactly the same thing? (Picture book. 4-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-439-10431-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Levine/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
Combining saccharine visuals with a monotonous ditty, this book follows a child from morning wake-up to evening snuggle-down with no fewer than 13 stanzas modeled on “The Farmer in the Dell” and static illustrations in which the young, chubby-cheeked narrator, whose wide eyes are generally looking off to the side, is awkwardly posed’sometimes floating slightly—against generic indoor and outdoor scenes. His mother looks about ten, his father perhaps five years older. The author and illustrator have done much better work in the past; pass this up in favor of Nancy White Carlstrom’s evergreen Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? (1986). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-531-30138-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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