by Gabriela Olmos ; translated by Elisa Amato ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 14, 2013
Bibliotherapy is a tricky business, as is the desire to shield young children from images that may cause nightmares. This is...
Created to benefit the International Board on Books for Young People’s Fund for Children in Crisis program, this picture book presents provocative images and ideas regarding the violence many young people encounter.
Twelve Mexican artists each depict a different scene from a single child’s dream about how life could be: A life-sized pistol emits a butterfly; scarred and weapon-toting drug lords sell and blow soap bubbles; a cloud of laughing mouths outwits a kidnapper. Each spread varies stylistically, from cheery pop art to dark caricatures, but this works in the dream context. The narrator wakes to a reality of skeletal arms rising from the earth, attended by crows—a composition symbolic of the nightmare lived by many. The concluding message of inspiration uses the metaphor of city trees that “fight back” (an unfortunate word choice, given the book’s mission) “and break open the sidewalks… / and grow despite everything,” unlike those that are “crushed by the pavement.” The challenge will be matching this to the right audience—more mature children or those who have lived through the worlds evoked. The cover illustration of lacey, white dandelion fluff does not hint at the dangers within, and this purposeful book is not an all-purpose read.
Bibliotherapy is a tricky business, as is the desire to shield young children from images that may cause nightmares. This is sure to arouse passion in both camps. (editor’s note) (Picture book. 7-12)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-55498-330-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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by Kate DiCamillo ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
Tenderly resonant and memorable.
Ferris finds herself in the midst of several love stories during the summer before fifth grade.
Emma Phineas Wilkey’s moniker comes from the circumstances of her birth: under the Ferris wheel at the fairground. Her contained world, centered around her family and best friend, is filled with kindness, humor, and singular personalities, while the indeterminate late-20th-century small-town setting feels like a safe place from which to observe heartbreak and loss. Ferris’ architect father and her pragmatic mother, on break from teaching high school math, anchor her home life, along with Pinky, her hilariously ferocious 6-year-old sister, and Charisse, her grandmother, who claims to have seen an unhappy ghost in their big old house. Ferris’ best friend, Billy Jackson, whom she’s loved since kindergarten, hears the music of the world: “The whole world is singing all the time.” Ferris, serious and sensitive, is attuned to the ways that the vocabulary words they learned in Mrs. Mielk’s fourth grade class describe moments in her life. DiCamillo’s gift for conveying an entire person and world in a few brushstrokes of storytelling provides depth and quiet magic to this account of an eventful summer in which a ghost is appeased, an outlaw (Pinky) is somewhat reformed, and an uncle and aunt are reconciled. Ferris experiences two surprising moments of transcendence and becomes aware of the ways love suffuses everything. Characters are cued white.
Tenderly resonant and memorable. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781536231052
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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by E.B. White illustrated by Garth Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 1952
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
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