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
A sweet and well-meaning lesson in personification and metaphor, but this picture book fails to shine.
The sun sends the world and its inhabitants warm thoughts for peace, unity, and positivity.
A smiling sun shines down on each double-page spread, just as the moon did in Storms and Pavlović’s previous book, Moon Wishes (2019). Using the refrain “if I were the sun,” the narrator describes the sun’s movement from sunrise to sunset throughout the seasons of the year. The sun is personified as a serene explorer, muse, and comforter who lovingly wakes the world with “a gentle morning song” and ends each day with peaceful rest. In between rising and setting, the sun explores “every corner of this wondrous earth.” Alas, the narrative is disappointingly disjointed—the sun flits among pages that depict African wildlife, a school of smiling fish swimming up toward the sun, and a bear fishing in a river. Looking at the world from the sun’s point of view, the narrator is better able to “delight in all our differences”—the accompanying illustration shows 11 disparate birds perched in the same tree. Meanwhile, human diversity is portrayed on other pages: Happy children—some with brown skin, others with pink skin—make snow angels; a man using a wheelchair sits at a harvest table; and an Asian-presenting man wearing a conical hat walks across marshland. Pavlović’s loose mixed-media, colored-pencil, and ink illustrations use warm colors and are as consistently uplifting as Storms’ pretty but desultory word pictures. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A sweet and well-meaning lesson in personification and metaphor, but this picture book fails to shine. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-77306-450-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
A full-hearted valentine.
A soaring panegyric to elementary school as a communal place to learn and grow.
“This is a kid,” Schu begins. “This is a kid in a class. This is a class in a hall….” If that class—possibly second graders, though they could be a year to either side of that—numbers only about a dozen in Jamison’s bright paintings, it makes up for that in diversity, with shiny faces of variously brown or olive complexion well outnumbering paler ones; one child using a wheelchair; and at least two who appear to be Asian. (The adult staff is likewise racially diverse.) The children are individualized in the art, but the author’s narrative is addressed more to an older set of readers as it runs almost entirely to collective nouns and abstract concepts: “We share. We help. / This is a community, growing.” Younger audiences will zero in on the pictures, which depict easily recognizable scenes of both individual and collective learning and play, with adults and classmates always on hand to help out or join in. Signs of conflict are unrealistically absent, but an occasional downcast look does add a bit of nuance to the general air of eager positivity on display. A sad face at an apartment window with a comment that “[s]ometimes something happens, and we can’t all be together” can be interpreted as an oblique reference to pandemic closings, but the central message here is that school is a physical space, not a virtual one, where learning and community happen. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A full-hearted valentine. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0458-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
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