Sam is saddled with a rutabaga as his vegetable for the next two weeks in second-grade science.
Sam doesn’t like any kind of vegetable, but once he sees his rutabaga—“the size of a softball”; “round, but not perfectly round”; half purple and half “dirty yellow”; and with “a weird brown thing sticking out of the top like a little tree stump”—he is sure he’s got the worst. How is he supposed to write a letter from the rutabaga’s perspective? Drawing a smiley face on it helps, as does naming it. All of a sudden Sam becomes deeply protective of Rudy. How can he make Rudy happy? Well, as his elderly friend and walking companion, Mr. Stockfish, tells him, rutabagas grow underground, so Rudy must want some nice dirt. Thus is born Sam’s plan to collect neighbors’ food scraps and make a compost pile in Mrs. Kerner’s backyard, where he boards his chicken, Helga. While this outing is not as obviously purposive as series opener Sam the Man & the Chicken Plan (2016), it is equally appealing. Sam’s simultaneous awareness that Rudy is not alive and deepening investment in Rudy’s well-being are developmentally spot-on. Dowell’s characterizations are deft, accomplished in small but telling details. Sam is white, as is Mrs. Kerner, and Mr. Stockfish is black; the romance developing between the latter two is a quiet delight.
Readers will be happy to spend time with Sam the Man . (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-4069-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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A color-themed vision of what school should be like.
In what amounts to a rehash of The World Needs More Purple People (2020), Bell and Hart address adult as well as young readers to explain what “curious and kind you” can do to make school, or for that matter the universe, a better place. Again culminating in the vague but familiar “JUST. BE. YOU!” the program remains much the same—including asking questions both “universe-sized” (“Could you make a burrito larger than a garbage truck?”) and “smaller, people-sized” (i.e., personal), working hard to learn and make things, offering praise and encouragement, speaking up and out, laughing together, and listening to others. In the illustrations, light-skinned, blond-haired narrator Penny poses amid a busy, open-mouthed, diverse cast that includes a child wearing a hijab and one who uses a wheelchair. Wiseman opts to show fewer grown-ups here, but the children are the same as in the earlier book, and a scene showing two figures blowing chocolate milk out of their noses essentially recycles a visual joke from the previous outing. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
The message is worthy, but this phoned-in follow-up doesn’t add anything significant. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-43490-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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A monohued tally of positive character traits.
Purple is a “magic color,” affirm the authors (both actors, though Hart’s name recognition is nowhere near the level of Bell’s), and “purple people” are the sort who ask questions, laugh wholeheartedly, work hard, freely voice feelings and opinions, help those who might “lose” their own voices in the face of unkindness, and, in sum, can “JUST BE (the real) YOU.” Unlike the obsessive protagonist of Victoria Kann’s Pinkalicious franchise, being a purple person has “nothing to do with what you look like”—a point that Wiseman underscores with scenes of exuberantly posed cartoon figures (including versions of the authors) in casual North American attire but sporting a wide range of ages, skin hues, and body types. A crowded playground at the close (no social distancing here) displays all this wholesome behavior in action. Plenty of purple highlights, plus a plethora of broad smiles and wide-open mouths, crank up the visual energy—and if the earnest overall tone doesn’t snag the attention of young audiences, a grossly literal view of the young narrator and a grandparent “snot-out-our-nose laughing” should do the trick. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10.4-by-20.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 22.2% of actual size.)
The buoyant uplift seems a bit pre-packaged but spot-on nonetheless. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-12196-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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