This book needs to reject stereotypes in order to get woke.
Trouble sleeping keeps little Boris from thriving at school.
Boris, a nocturnal, anthropomorphic badger child, can’t sleep during the day due to the titular “worrisome wakies” that make him toss and turn until sundown. When he goes to school in the evening, he falls asleep and misses out on everything. Munsinger’s illustrations depict the fun that his classmates describe to him when he finally begins to worry about what he’s been missing, including “The school play. You were a rock.” Throughout the book, cartoon-style watercolor-and-ink illustrations build on the text’s playful humor, but on this spread, the illustration of the school play depicts a sleeping Boris as Plymouth Rock lying before smiling badger children who are costumed like Pilgrims and carry a roasted turkey and a pumpkin, while another is clad as a stereotypical Indian in a feather headdress and holding corn. While humor may have been the intent, many will find the result anything but funny when they consider the picture’s outdated whitewashing of colonialist history. Moving on, Boris resolves to get a good day’s sleep so that he can participate fully at school, and he ends up being the “liveliest cub” there.
This book needs to reject stereotypes in order to get woke. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-64094-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet and unexpected addition to the waiting-for-baby shelf.
A big, yellow hound dog has small, wonderful dreams.
Emma’s dreams are doggily simple. Rendered in gray, they manifest above her contentedly slumbering form: “singing, dancing, rolling in grass, splashing in water, going for walks,” and eating. After she wakes and eats, she naps again, sprawled on her back, tummy distended, the very picture of canine bliss. Pages turn, with Cooper’s lyrical text focusing on Emma and her sensations: “The days went on, shifting and taking shape, and now there were times when her whole body felt strange, but there was no stopping the days.” A gently curving line of overlapping Emmas, rising, stretching, scratching, shifting, and resettling, underscores time’s march. Adult readers may be anxious at this point, fearing Emma’s impending death with the page turn—but no, it turns out Emma’s been literally full of wonders, and she gazes mildly at a puppy emerging from her own body. Then there they are, seven little Emmas, and they now embody her dreams. Cooper’s brushy, loose watercolors, outlined in swoops of ink, complement his Emma-focused text. She resides in a human home, but her owner appears only as tan-skinned hands extending from the margin to offer a bowl of food, caress her snout, or towel off a pup. In this way, Cooper invites readers into Emma’s interiority, allowing them to sit quietly and wonder with her.
A sweet and unexpected addition to the waiting-for-baby shelf. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781250884763
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Sweet fare for bed- or naptimes, with a light frosting of natural history.
A sonorous, soporific invitation to join woodland creatures in bedding down for the night.
As in her Moon Babies, illustrated by Amy Hevron (2019), Jameson displays a rare gift for harmonious language and rhyme. She leads off with a bear: “Come home, Big Paws. / Berry picker / Honey trickster / Shadows deepen in the glen. / Lumber back inside your den.” Continuing in the same pattern, she urges a moose (“Velvet Nose”), a deer (“Tiny Hooves”), and a succession of ever smaller creatures to find their nooks and nests as twilight deepens in Boutavant’s woodsy, autumnal scenes and snow begins to drift down. Through each of those scenes quietly walks an alert White child (accompanied by an unusually self-controlled pooch), peering through branches or over rocks at the animals in the foregrounds and sketching them in a notebook. The observer’s turn comes round at last, as a bearded parent beckons: “This way, Small Boots. / Brave trailblazer / Bright stargazer / Cabin’s toasty. Blanket’s soft. / Snuggle deep in sleeping loft.” The animals go unnamed, leaving it to younger listeners to identify each one from the pictures…if they can do so before the verses’ murmurous tempo closes their eyes.
Sweet fare for bed- or naptimes, with a light frosting of natural history. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7063-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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