Readers will thrill to the sense of discovery and exploration the girl experiences: “It is possible.” (Picture book. 2-4)
The witty minimalism of the black-and-white line artwork by Swiss illustrator Albertine in this extreme landscape-format children’s book belies the psychological depth of the content.
A child is traveling by train from her mother’s home in the city to her grandmother’s home, which is “practically on the other side of the world.” The train, the only color element of the whole book, moves through a landscape that begins as a modern European cityscape (plenty of signs in French for language practice!) and increasingly becomes more surreal and Seuss-ian as the landscape becomes more rural. The story is a gently veiled moral tale of resolution and independence. In spite of the admonitions of her mother and grandmother, who tell her that it is impossible to know the whole world, the child asserts that she intends to travel everywhere, and thus she will be able to know the whole world. Her assertions of independence and determination gain momentum as the train continues. The fact that the train does arrive at its far-distant destination, reuniting the girl with her grandmother, suggests that the child is right and that adults are too rigid in their thinking.
Readers will thrill to the sense of discovery and exploration the girl experiences: “It is possible.” (Picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: April 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4521-1934-2
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
A natural for group storytimes, though plenty of single tots will enjoy seeing Tom’s seemingly quotidian world suddenly...
Barton (My Car, 2001; My Bus, 2014) wheels out another conveyance—but sends this one rolling past a set of escalating surprises to a high-wire climax.
Following introductions and a view of his bicycle with its major parts labeled, Tom climbs aboard and pedals off “to work.” He sets up expectations of a perfectly ordinary ride by passing predictable parades of trucks, then buses, then cars and finally “lots of people.” These are knocked askew as successive page turns show him going on to pass…monkeys, then acrobats, then caged tigers and lions. His commute finishing at a tent, Tom then steps inside to don a loudly decorated “uniform,” paint his face with clown makeup, climb a ladder and go “to work // on my unicycle. / Look! No hands!” Rendered in saturated colors with thick, slightly wobbly digital strokes, the illustrations are characteristically simple enough to decipher easily either close up or at a distance. Lines of equally legible text are printed in a bold sans serif, split into short phrases and printed against sharply contrasting backgrounds.
A natural for group storytimes, though plenty of single tots will enjoy seeing Tom’s seemingly quotidian world suddenly transformed. (Picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-233699-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
As the book opens, paper engineering animates a variety of vehicles on the page.
A race car moves ahead of its competitor, a digger’s shovel lifts, a boat crests a wave, a train emerges from a tunnel, and a rocket zooms through space. Abbott’s bold-outlined cartoons in highly saturated colors give the book a playfully busy energy. The almost unnecessary text captions the action (“The racecar whizzes past”) and includes one question per scene to engage readers (“What shape are the wheels?”). The companion title, Pop and Play: Zoo Animals (978-0-7534-7163-0), features wild critters and includes the same page-animating pop-ups: A monkey swings through a jungle, a tiger peeks out from behind a tree, penguins slide on the ice, and more. As in the first book, the childlike art is more appealing than the workmanlike text. Each one-sentence description of the action is accompanied by simple questions or invitations to count on every double-page spread—except, inexplicably, the panda’s. The direction to count the 16 teeth on the crocodile will prove daunting to many toddlers. Despite these quibbles, both books are likable and affordable starter pop-ups. (Pop-up/board book. 2-4)
Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7534-7162-3
Page Count: 10
Publisher: Kingfisher
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
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