Kindness is contagious in the Murrows’ latest wordless picture book.
The week starts on the Zero Local train the way so many do—with delays. Landscape and figures alike are subsumed in the grays and shadows of textured pencil drawings, capturing the haze of passengers’ Monday frustration. Only two riders break up the gray—a white adult with a yellow hat and a shoulder-riding yellow bird and a young person of color wearing a yellow shirt. The passenger with the yellow hat pulls out pencil and paper to draw a funny picture of birds as a thank-you card for the train driver, a simple act of kindness marked by the driver’s vest’s turning from gray to yellow. The artist’s drawings and kindness continue through the week, until a day comes when they do not board the train. As delays and tension sharply rise, the young rider also decides to create some art and cuts out paper birds to offer to fellow passengers. Where words so often fail, the wordless breathes life into people’s smallest actions and deepest impacts, as the Murrows’ spreads uplift the mundane. It’s a positive love letter to community (even among commuter-train regulars), diversity, and paying it forward. A lack of contrast in the predominantly gray palette may present an obstacle for readers with low sensitivity.
Timely and timeless, as kindness always is. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9747-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S TRANSPORTATION
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A feel-good book about self-acceptance.
Empire star Byers and Bobo offer a beautifully illustrated, rhyming picture book detailing what one brown-skinned little girl with an impressive Afro appreciates about herself. Relying on similes, the text establishes a pattern with the opening sentence, “Like the sun, I’m here to shine,” and follows it through most of the book. Some of them work well, while others fall flat: “Like the rain, I’m here to pour / and drip and fall until I’m full.” In some vignettes she’s by herself; and in others, pictured along with children of other races. While the book’s pro-diversity message comes through, the didactic and even prideful expressions of self-acceptance make the book exasperatingly preachy—a common pitfall for books by celebrity authors. In contrast, Bobo’s illustrations are visually stunning. After painting the children and the objects with which they interact, such as flowers, books, and a red wagon, in acrylic on board for a traditional look, she scanned the images into Adobe Photoshop and added the backgrounds digitally in chalk. This lends a whimsical feel to such details as a rainbow, a window, wind, and rain—all reminiscent of Harold and the Purple Crayon. Bobo creates an inclusive world of girls in which wearing glasses, using a wheelchair, wearing a head scarf, and having a big Afro are unconditionally accepted rather than markers for othering.
A pro-girl book with illustrations that far outshine the text. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-266712-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.
In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.
Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2021
Categories: CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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