A thought-provoking way of looking at the world, and imaginative kids will love it.
A journey into the world of big and little and a nudge to think outside the box.
This whimsical, quirky, and engaging picture book, a Spanish import by a Turkish creator, takes readers on an Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland–type exploration of perceptive relativity. What is little to one may be big to another; if readers were as strong as ants, they could lift rhinos; if they could jump as high as fleas, they could reach the top of the Eiffel Tower—these are just some of the thought-provoking ideas presented. The narrative (appealingly hand-lettered) is accompanied by collaged illustrations that are just as whimsical and that cleverly build as the story unfolds. “If your foot could grow as fast as a caterpillar can during its life cycle… / …your foot would be 3 times larger after just a few days. / It would keep growing until…it would not fit in a school bus. Like this elephant.” Huh? Readers may ask. But the introduction of the pachyderm leads to the idea of an elephant’s big footprint—which, if it filled with water, could be habitat for 60 different species. While the story unfolds in what appears to be a rather dizzying array of free-form thoughts, it holds itself together—just—although readers will want to go through it more than once to grasp all the clever connections. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A thought-provoking way of looking at the world, and imaginative kids will love it. (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0837-6
Page Count: 46
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
A good overview of this complex, essential organ, with an energetic seasoning of silliness.
An introduction to the lead guitar and vocalist for the Brainiacs—the human brain.
The brain (familiar to readers of Seluk’s “The Awkward Yeti” webcomic, which spun off the adult title Heart and Brain, 2015) looks like a dodgeball with arms and legs—pinkish, sturdy, and roundish, with a pair of square-framed spectacles bestowing an air of importance and hipness. Other organs of the body—tongue, lungs, stomach, muscle, and heart—are featured as members of the brain’s rock band (the verso of the dust jacket is a poster of the band). Seluk’s breezy, conversational prose and brightly colored, boldly outlined cartoon illustrations deliver basic information. The brain’s role in keeping the heart beating and other automatic functions, directing body movements, interpreting sights and sounds, remembering smells and tastes, and regulating sleep and hunger are all explained, prose augmented by dialogue balloons and information sidebars. Seluk points out, importantly, that feelings originate in the brain: “You can control how you react…but your feelings happen no matter what.” The parodied album covers on the front endpapers (including the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Green Day, Run DMC, Queen, Nirvana) will amuse parents—or at least grandparents—and the rear endpapers serve up band members’ clever social media and texting screenshots. Backmatter includes a glossary and further brain trivia but no resources or bibliography.
A good overview of this complex, essential organ, with an energetic seasoning of silliness. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-16700-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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