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THE TWO FRIDAS

Name: THE TWO FRIDAS
Author: Frida Kahlo
ISBN: 978-0-7643-6116-6

by Frida Kahlo ; illustrated by Gianluca Folì ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 2021

Peculiarly beautiful.

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A famous female painter’s memory, explored.

Using a 1950 entry from Kahlo’s diary (translated by an agency), Folì brings the real and the imaginary together to show the worlds within Kahlo. Recalling a memory from when she was 6, Frida recounts how she formed an “intense imaginary friendship with a girl” her age. To visit this friend, Frida would draw a door while looking out her window, exit through it, and jump through the sign of the Pinzón creamery. At first, Folì’s use of color in the illustrations is minimal, highlighting minute details like small plants and polka dots. But when Frida dives “through the Ó” in the sign, she enters a world of color and life. Folì’s take on Frida’s imagination is populated with colorful Mexican folk elements that make appearances in the artist’s later work. In this world, Frida becomes her artistic self, donning her floral headband and following her imaginary friend’s cues as they dance. When Frida leaves the imaginary world, a more-colorful real one awaits her, as some characters escape. Folì’s artwork goes beyond the typical bushy eyebrows that characterize Kahlo and focuses on the imaginative aspects of the world created by Frida. The backmatter gives insight to her life as a child who battled an illness that caused her to limp and the importance that being from Mexico played in her art.

Peculiarly beautiful. (Picture book/memoir. 5-8)

Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-7643-6116-6

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Schiffer

Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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YOU CAN!

WORDS OF WISDOM FROM THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD

by Charlie Hart ; illustrated by Jill Howarth ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 27, 2018

Strong evidence that sometimes you really do just think you can.

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A medley of aspirational sentiments and newly fashioned illustrations—both inspired by those of the classic tale.

The result is as ill wrought as it is ill conceived. Hart boils down the various versions of the original story’s major themes to a series of pithy formulations. These range from the mundane, “A positive attitude always helps when the going gets tough,” to such excruciatingly trite lines as “Remember that it’s always darkest before the dawn,” and “There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel!” He then fills in the page count with assorted tangential apothegms: “Always run on time”; “Everyone needs a little downtime for maintenance” (followed later on by “It’s okay to take a break”); “Don’t forget that everyone travels on their own track.” Evidently not having seen the final text, Howarth follows up this last with a contradictory view on the next page of two engines on the same track (“Go at your own pace!”). An earlier sequence involving a fallen tree finds it placed in three different places in as many illustrations. In general she sticks to traditional portrayals of the anthropomorphic locomotives and the toys in her diminutive scenes but gives one of the two toy dolls brown skin.

Strong evidence that sometimes you really do just think you can. (Picture book. 6-8, adult)

Pub Date: March 27, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5247-8468-3

Page Count: 80

Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap

Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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DUMPLING DREAMS

HOW JOYCE CHEN BROUGHT THE DUMPLING FROM BEIJING TO CAMBRIDGE

by Carrie Clickard ; illustrated by Katy Wu ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 5, 2017

A fascinating historical character is presented in terms easy for young children to appreciate, and requests to experiment...

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One of America’s most famous 20th-century immigrants, Joyce Chen, gained notoriety the hard way.

Brought up in pre-revolutionary China, Chen left Shanghai with her husband and two children in 1949 to immigrate to the U.S., where she settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lively cartoonish pastel-and-crayon illustrations and rhyming couplets show how young Jia (later renamed Joyce) learned to cook with a man the text simply calls Cook, possibly a family servant, mastering the traditional art of making dumplings, noodles, and sweet rice balls. At the dragon boat festival, she proudly presents her father with her own creation, zongzi rice packages tightly tied “with five bright strings.” Once in the U.S., Joyce and her children face the challenge of life in America: “New words to learn. Strange food to try.” Chen becomes a mentor to other Chinese immigrants and is soon inspired to open a restaurant. The restaurant is immediately popular, but her dumplings aren’t. She overcomes the perception of Chinese food as “gluey stew” by rebranding her dumplings as “Peking Ravioli.” A cookbook and a TV show soon follow, and she has successfully introduced authentic Chinese cuisine to the East Coast. A timeline, glossary, bibliography, and dumpling recipes are included.

A fascinating historical character is presented in terms easy for young children to appreciate, and requests to experiment with dumpling dough will certainly ensue. (Picture book/biography. 5-8)