Tasty but doesn’t quite hit the spot.
It’s dumpling day, and Sylvia goes from apartment to apartment to help make dumplings from different cultures.
The first stop is Sylvia’s friend Prisha’s apartment, where they make Indian momos. From there, the two friends continue on to Moria’s home to make Jamaican johnnycakes. Then the three kids visit Aaron’s to make his Jewish grandmother’s kreplach. This pattern continues until nine children are squeezed into the final kitchen to make Polish pierogi with Sylvia’s busha. A total of nine dumplings from families of varying skin tones are described and pictured along the way, culminating in a rooftop party. Readers will enjoy learning about different cultures’ dumpling traditions, and this book certainly celebrates culinary diversity. Illustrations featuring muted colors that tend toward warm sepia tones and a classic drawing style give the feeling of a throwback to an earlier time, but the human figures come across stiffly, with static poses and fixed expressions. Small inconsistencies in the story may trip up readers, such as the description of eating hot Georgian khinkali right after filling them with meat and spices, with no mention of cooking. This straightforward tale showcases some great food but is not as complex or emotionally satisfying as Dumplings for Lili (2021) by Melissa Iwai, which covers very similar territory. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Tasty but doesn’t quite hit the spot. (information on other kinds of dumplings) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4998-1234-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
Sure to be poopular with party planners, particularly those with strong stomachs and a hands-on approach.
The you-know-what hits the fan after a lad’s parents rashly allow him to pick a theme for his birthday party.
Julian insists, and so after the party store poops out, everyone sets to cranking out homemade poop-up invitations, “poopsicles” and “lollypoops,” costumes, and games like “Pin-the-Poop-on-the-Toilet.” But will anyone drop in? Do they ever—in such massive streams that even the local news team catches wind of the event. Better yet, dancing the “Doo-Doo Doo-op” to tunes from the Dookie-Poo band and whacking the poop piñata, everyone has a blast. The party assumes such legendary status that news of it spreads around the world, prompting Julian and his family to create a graphic instruction manual together. Galán goes to town with swirling scenes in saturated hues with lots of brown, featuring hyped-up figures with wide eyes and huge grins. Julian’s family appears to be an interracial one, with an Asian-presenting dad and White-presenting mom whose attitudes modulate from disgust to delight over the course of the story. Readers inspired to organize poop parties of their own will find models for suitable decorations in the pictures. A caveat: The recipe for poop slime that Berger applies to the tail end uses glue and baby oil, among other ingredients, but is not labeled as inedible. (This book was reviewed digitally with 8.5-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at 65% of actual size.)
Sure to be poopular with party planners, particularly those with strong stomachs and a hands-on approach. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-23787-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it.
A guide to better behavior—at home, on the playground, in class, and in the library.
Serving as a sort of overview for the series’ 12 previous exercises in behavior modeling, this latest outing opens with a set of badly behaving dinos, identified in an endpaper key and also inconspicuously in situ. Per series formula, these are paired to leading questions like “Does she spit out her broccoli onto the floor? / Does he shout ‘I hate meat loaf!’ while slamming the door?” (Choruses of “NO!” from young audiences are welcome.) Midway through, the tone changes (“No, dinosaurs don’t”), and good examples follow to the tune of positive declarative sentences: “They wipe up the tables and vacuum the floors. / They share all the books and they never slam doors,” etc. Teague’s customary, humongous prehistoric crew, all depicted in exact detail and with wildly flashy coloration, fill both their spreads and their human-scale scenes as their human parents—no same-sex couples but some are racially mixed, and in one the man’s the cook—join a similarly diverse set of sibs and other children in either disapprobation or approving smiles. All in all, it’s a well-tested mix of oblique and prescriptive approaches to proper behavior as well as a lighthearted way to play up the use of “please,” “thank you,” and even “I’ll help when you’re hurt.”
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-36334-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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