A beautifully illustrated tale that encourages readers to look for the sparkle in everyone.
The sparkle from a shooting star searches for her purpose in this debut rhyming picture book.
As a star shoots by Earth, a sparkle falls, plummeting into a muddy alley. Each time she tries to get somewhere safe, she finds herself worse off. First, she’s stuck in the rain, then she gets caught in a cat’s fur. The feline takes her to the forest, but it’s no better there. She lands “in the river, / to her deep despair.” After the river mishap, she gets lost in the fog, falls into a hole in a tree, and ends up tumbling into a dumpster. As she’s about to lose hope, she decides she needs a goal or she’ll keep stumbling into misadventures. Inspired by a nearby house’s glow, she enters and finds her purpose: lighting the heart of a little brown-skinned boy. Witek’s phrases scan well, with a mostly consistent rhythmic pattern and solid rhymes throughout. The plot is a little clunky, with travel from the city to the forest, back to the city, and to a rural farmhouse in an order that doesn’t feel natural. The sparkle’s goal—brightening someone’s life—works as a metaphor in ways that the connection to shooting stars doesn’t. But Mikki’s gorgeous skyscape images are eye-catching and worth poring over, which may make readers wish the sparkle spent less time in the trash and fog and more time in the glorious, starry night.
A beautifully illustrated tale that encourages readers to look for the sparkle in everyone.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781039163539
Page Count: -
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees.
After Duncan finds his crayons gone—yet again—letters arrive, detailing their adventures in friendship.
Eleven crayons send missives from their chosen spots throughout Duncan’s home (and one from his classroom). Red enjoys the thrill of extinguishing “pretend fires” with Duncan’s toy firetruck. White, so often dismissed as invisible, finds a new calling subbing in for the missing queen on the black-and-white chessboard. “Now everyone ALWAYS SEES ME!…(Well, half the time!)” Pink’s living the dream as a pastry chef helming the Breezy Bake Oven, “baking everything from little cupcakes…to…OTHER little cupcakes!” Teal, who’s hitched a ride to school in Duncan’s backpack, meets the crayons in the boy’s desk and writes, “Guess what? I HAVE A TWIN! How come you never told me?” Duncan wants to see his crayons and “meet their new friends.” A culminating dinner party assembles the crayons and their many guests: a table tennis ball, dog biscuits, a well-loved teddy bear, and more. The premise—personified crayons, away and back again—is well-trammeled territory by now, after over a dozen books and spinoffs, and Jeffers once more delivers his signature cartooning and hand-lettering. Though the pages lack the laugh-out-loud sight gags and side-splittingly funny asides of previous outings, readers—especially fans of the crayons’ previous outings—will enjoy checking in on their pals.
Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780593622360
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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