Skip this; for celebrations of curly splendor, get bell hooks’ Happy to Be Nappy, illustrated by Chris Raschka (1999), and...
A little girl’s very large curls cause chaos in this clunky lesson.
Pink-skinned, rosy-cheeked Clara loves her upward-growing mop of red curls; she even carries her crayons, ruler and sandwich in it. She wishes her ringlets were the “tallest hair in all the world!” Finding a product that promises “Big & Beautiful Hair,” she slathers it on. Clara’s orangey-red, yellow-highlighted curls grow so tall and wide they bleed off the pages. The huge mane makes Clara famous. But now her hair obscures people’s views at school and in a theater; reaching the sky, it blocks airplanes. Clara confesses that she used more hair cream than she had claimed to, and her mother arranges a haircut—though why the haircut required the confession is anybody’s guess, unless tell the truth is another message, on top of be careful what you wish for and don’t let your hairdo bother anyone. Poole’s verse scans poorly—“Little Clara May was very very small. / But what was most extraordinary was her hair was really tall!”—and rhymes don’t always rhyme (trees/pleased; world/curls). The cartoony illustrations are slick and occasionally sloppy: In the theater, four kids face away from the movie screen purely so readers can see their faces.
Skip this; for celebrations of curly splendor, get bell hooks’ Happy to Be Nappy, illustrated by Chris Raschka (1999), and Carolivia Herron’s Nappy Hair, illustrated by Joe Cepeda (1997), instead. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62370-043-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Stone Arch Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Echoes of Runaway Bunny color this exchange between a bath-averse piglet and his patient mother. Using a strategy that would probably be a nonstarter in real life, the mother deflects her stubborn offspring’s string of bath-free occupational conceits with appeals to reason: “Pirates NEVER EVER take baths!” “Pirates don’t get seasick either. But you do.” “Yeesh. I’m an astronaut, okay?” “Well, it is hard to bathe in zero gravity. It’s hard to poop and pee in zero gravity too!” And so on, until Mom’s enticing promise of treasure in the deep sea persuades her little Treasure Hunter to take a dive. Chunky figures surrounded by lots of bright white space in Segal’s minimally detailed watercolors keep the visuals as simple as the plotline. The language isn’t quite as basic, though, and as it rendered entirely in dialogue—Mother Pig’s lines are italicized—adult readers will have to work hard at their vocal characterizations for it to make any sense. Moreover, younger audiences (any audiences, come to that) may wonder what the piggy’s watery closing “EUREKA!!!” is all about too. Not particularly persuasive, but this might coax a few young porkers to get their trotters into the tub. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25425-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If Black Lives Matter, they deserve more specificity than this.
A lushly illustrated picture book with a troubling message.
Little Lala walks with her father after his successful day of fishing. When Mama calls her home for bed, a host of “good night”s delays her: to the bird, the monkey, and even the rock. As Lala wanders through her village in the darkening twilight, readers appreciate its expansive beauty and Lala’s simple joys. Although it’s been artfully written and richly illustrated by an award-winning author of many multicultural stories, this book has problems that overshadow its beauty. “African veld” sets the story in southern Africa, but its vague locale encourages Americans to think that distinctions among African countries don’t matter. Lala wears braids or locks that stick straight up, recalling the 19th-century pickaninny, and her inconsistent skin color ranges from deep ebony like her father’s to light brown. Shadows may cause some of these differences, but if it weren’t for her identifiable hair, readers might wonder if the same child wanders from page to page. Perhaps most striking of all is Lala’s bedtime story: not an African tale but an American classic. While this might evoke nostalgia in some readers, it also suggests that southern Africa has no comparably great bedtime books for Lala, perhaps in part because American children’s literature dominates the world market.
If Black Lives Matter, they deserve more specificity than this. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-17384-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
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