An amazing, joyous achievement.
An unusual, fascinating blueprint for living a good, happy life.
The book assumes familiarity with Old Testament personages, but carefully constructed retellings allow them to be seen in new and different ways. In fact, the audience is instructed to pay attention to the words and even closer attention to the art, created with stunning collages of found objects. Bright double-page spreads introduce the characters, followed by very brief moral mantras. The text speaks directly to readers, zeroing in on exploits, adventures, or life works and putting forth unusual interpretations or twists. Children are urged to “Be Curious” like Eve, shown with a magnifying glass for an eye and billowing hair made of tiles with numbers and Hebrew letters, while a leopard-skin snake slithers out from a frame of plastic food (for thought). Noah, with an oven mitt face, stands on a cork ark carrying plastic animals as a dove made from a white glove flies overhead. Moses’ hair and beard are matzah pieces. Miriam’s face is a tambourine, and other characters show a wide variety of “skin” tones. Every tale is a bit of earnest fancy with an incredible variety of highly detailed worlds. Readers and their grown-ups will examine, peruse, and discuss it all again and again, with some ideas remaining ever mysterious. “Trust the Journey,” “Dream Big,” “Laugh Yourself Silly,” and “Feel Your Power.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An amazing, joyous achievement. (more about the characters, authors’ note) (Religious picture book. 4-10)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780374390105
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet and endearing feathered migration.
A relationship between a Latina grandmother and her mixed-race granddaughter serves as the frame to depict the ruby-throated hummingbird migration pattern.
In Granny’s lap, a girl is encouraged to “keep still” as the intergenerational pair awaits the ruby-throated hummingbirds with bowls of water in their hands. But like the granddaughter, the tz’unun—“the word for hummingbird in several [Latin American] languages”—must soon fly north. Over the next several double-page spreads, readers follow the ruby-throated hummingbird’s migration pattern from Central America and Mexico through the United States all the way to Canada. Davies metaphorically reunites the granddaughter and grandmother when “a visitor from Granny’s garden” crosses paths with the girl in New York City. Ray provides delicately hashed lines in the illustrations that bring the hummingbirds’ erratic flight pattern to life as they travel north. The watercolor palette is injected with vibrancy by the addition of gold ink, mirroring the hummingbirds’ flashing feathers in the slants of light. The story is supplemented by notes on different pages with facts about the birds such as their nest size, diet, and flight schedule. In addition, a note about ruby-throated hummingbirds supplies readers with detailed information on how ornithologists study and keep track of these birds.
A sweet and endearing feathered migration. (bibliography, index) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0538-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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