A sweet book to share with young children who are separated from someone they love.
In this gentle picture book, a family stays connected to Dad while he’s deployed overseas during World War II.
On the day Naomi was born, her father was drafted into the Army. Yet even as a baby, she knew that “Love was his gift to me, and I kept it, deep inside.” Debut children’s author Hill’s cheerful watercolor-and-ink images subtly convey the 1940s while her child-friendly story transcends time and place. Quiet humor keeps the overall mood light; when Naomi’s parents hug goodbye, for example, she says, “I got a little bit squeezed. I went ‘Oof!’ and they laughed through their tears.” From Naomi’s bath in the sink to her first taste of “dribbly applesauce,” her mother celebrates milestones in daily letters to her father, and he writes to them about “the blast of a bugle” and how he “missed Mom’s cooking.” Dad’s photograph is often “keeping us company,” Naomi says, yet his absence never overwhelms the story. Using that photo, Naomi draws a picture of her father, which her mother sends with her next letter. In a touching two-page illustration, the father and several other soldiers lean against trees, reading letters with dreamy smiles on their faces. Her father writes back, “I’m doing okay. I miss you two! Naomi’s drawing is a treasure.” After two-and-a-half years, a man with brown eyes and wavy hair appears in Naomi’s doorway holding her mother’s hand. She recognizes him: “I knew he was my father, home at last!” On the final page, the parents’ arms encircle the radiant girl, an image reminiscent of their farewell embrace but featuring smiles instead of tears. Throughout the book, Hill’s text emphasizes the love between parents and child, even while delicately acknowledging their sad, lonely feelings. The author artfully renders faces in soft, bright colors, and they express affection on every page. With better paper quality and a more professional cover, this book would be a long-lasting addition to any family’s collection.
A sweet book to share with young children who are separated from someone they love.Pub Date: May 22, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: The Troy Book Makers
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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