bookshelf

FROM MORNING TO NIGHT

Name: FROM MORNING TO NIGHT
Author: Flavia Ruotola
ISBN: 978-1-61689-615-7

A BOOK OF HIDDEN SHAPES

by Flavia Ruotola ; illustrated by Flavia Ruotola ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2018

A concept book with a mind-expanding perspective.

bookshelf

This French import uses simple techniques to encourage children to recognize familiar shapes in unusual places.

Each spread consists of a pair of illustrations, the first one a common object, the second one the same elements reoriented to represent a different object. The color palette of warm orange and blue is skillfully used to enhance the differences between the two images. A simple bowl and spoon, captioned “a morning meal” is transformed into “a magic mushroom” by means of inverting the speckled bowl and broadening the blue spoon to make it a blue stalk. An orange fruit becomes a planet when a simple orange sphere changes to blue and the blue stem becomes a tiny orange star. Similarly, an orange segment morphs into a distant planet’s orbiting moon, and a gift becomes a music box—from “a surprise” to “a song.” A simple horizontal line spanning the spread changes from “a path” sprinkled with blue dots recalling snowflakes to “the night sky” with a constellation of orange stars. Some of the pairs offer contrasting emotional perceptions: “disappointment”—an empty chest—becomes “delight”—a letter in an envelope. In the final illustration, lines of text in a book (“a story read”) become the striped sheets of a pair of twin beds (“time for bed”).

A concept book with a mind-expanding perspective. (Picture book. 3-6)

Pub Date: March 6, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-61689-615-7

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press

Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS

bookshelf

LOVE FROM THE CRAYONS

by Drew Daywalt ; illustrated by Oliver Jeffers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 24, 2019

As ephemeral as a valentine.

bookshelf

Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.

Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.

As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)

Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Penguin Workshop

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS

- BOOK REVIEW
BATH TIME FOR THE CRAYONS
by Drew Daywalt ; illustrated by Oliver Jeffers

- BOOK REVIEW
GOODNIGHT, CRAYONS
by Drew Daywalt ; illustrated by Oliver Jeffers

- BOOK REVIEW
NO SAM! AND THE MEOW OF DECEPTION
by Drew Daywalt ; illustrated by Mike Lowery

- SEEN & HEARD
Daywalt, Jeffers Collaborate on New ‘Crayons’ Book

- SEEN & HEARD
Daywalt, Jeffers Collaborate on New ‘Crayons’ Book

bookshelf

HAPPY EASTER FROM THE CRAYONS

by Drew Daywalt ; illustrated by Oliver Jeffers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 7, 2023

Let these crayons go back into their box.

bookshelf

The Crayons return to celebrate Easter.

Six crayons (Red, Orange, Yellow, Esteban, who is green and wears a yellow cape, White, and Blue) each take a shape and scribble designs on it. Purple, perplexed and almost angry, keeps asking why no one is creating an egg, but the six friends have a great idea. They take the circle decorated with red shapes, the square adorned with orange squiggles “the color of the sun,” the triangle with yellow designs, also “the color of the sun” (a bit repetitious), a rectangle with green wavy lines, a white star, about which Purple remarks: “DID you even color it?” and a rhombus covered with blue markings and slap the shapes onto a big, light-brown egg. Then the conversation turns to hiding the large object in plain sight. The joke doesn’t really work, the shapes are not clear enough for a concept book, and though colors are delineated, it’s not a very original color book. There’s a bit of clever repartee. When Purple observe that Esteban’s green rectangle isn’t an egg, Esteban responds, “No, but MY GOSH LOOK how magnificent it is!” Still, that won’t save this lackluster book, which barely scratches the surface of Easter, whether secular or religious. The multimedia illustrations, done in the same style as the other series entries, are always fun, but perhaps it’s time to retire these anthropomorphic coloring implements. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Let these crayons go back into their box. (Picture book. 3-5)