In this children’s tale in verse, a young bear has a heart operation and must find his way home to hibernate before winter sets in.
In 1955, winter is coming to Bear Ridge, Tennessee, and Elijah “Eli” Benjamin Bear—the story’s narrator—is born two months premature with a heart problem. The local, human doctors aren’t equipped to handle it, so they send Eli 600 miles away to Heroic Hearts hospital in Duck Bill, Mississippi. However, his parents can’t go with him; his father, a traveling salesman, is away, and his 400-pound mother won’t fit in the humans’ van. Eli’s mom sends him off with a special blanket that will give him wisdom and the ability to speak human language, as well as a code of essentials for life, written by his father. At the hospital, Eli gets necessary treatment—even though he’s the only nonhuman there—and he makes friends with his roommate, Billy, who kindly gives him his stuffed rabbit. Also kind is Nurse Dora, who provides Eli with sage advice about listening to his heart and asking for help from the “Great Bear Spirit.” Realizing that it’ll soon be time to hibernate, Eli conceives a bold plan to return home. It will require help from several friends and all his newfound wisdom. In his debut, Price confusingly melds the human and bear worlds; for example, it’s puzzling that Billy is astonished that Eli can talk, but that the Duck Bill doctors aren’t surprised at all. Still, the book offers a surprisingly successful blend of humor, self-help spirituality, and sweetness in verse that rhymes and scans well. When Eli asks Nurse Dora if she herself knows the Great Bear, she replies, “Love takes many forms. / For bears it is more furry, / But for all, love is the norm.” This is a perfectly wonderful concept, and one that’s emblematic of the book’s overall flavor. Bayouth’s (There’s a Zebra in My Hospital Room!, 2016) pencil drawings are cartoonish in style, but detailed, lively, and expressive.
A book that introduces kids to inner-wisdom concepts in an unusual, entertaining, and warmhearted manner.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9833562-0-2
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Heroic Hearts Media
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift.
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A paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere.
This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. Makes sense: aren’t parents and other close family members children’s first teachers? This duality suggests that the book might be best shared one-on-one between a nostalgic adult and a child who’s developed some self-confidence, having learned a thing or two from a parent, grandparent, older relative, or classroom instructor.
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943200-08-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Compendium
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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