A charming tale that weaves together history, serene illustrations, and a pleasing rhyme scheme.
A little girl explores an abandoned house near her home on the San Juan Islands and discovers something entirely unexpected.
Mae longs to visit an abandoned house across the bay, but her father says she’s not old enough. On her birthday, she discovers a rowboat with a broom and key inside, and she’s warned to return before dark to avoid smugglers: “Their boats are full of whiskey / and bales of wool to sell / but I have heard they sometimes hide / a poor, scared man as well.” Once at the house, Mae uses the key to unlock it and the broom to sweep it. After cleaning all day, she heads out after dark and discovers two boats on the water. When she hears a splash, Mae discovers a man abandoned on a rock and brings him back to the house where she offers him food and shelter. When Mae and her father visit the house together the next day, the only sign that anyone had been there is a bracelet woven from broom straw. Hippely subtly inserts the San Juan Islands’ history (specifically its role in smuggling Chinese laborers after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which is explained in a concluding historical note) into the story (written in an ABCB rhyme scheme); all elements blend well. Moore’s watercolor images are simple but effective, with minimal facial details and a muted color palate of dark greens, yellows, blues, and browns.
A charming tale that weaves together history, serene illustrations, and a pleasing rhyme scheme.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781360502625
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions.
Ellis, known for her illustrations for Colin Meloy’s Wildwood series, here riffs on the concept of “home.”
Shifting among homes mundane and speculative, contemporary and not, Ellis begins and ends with views of her own home and a peek into her studio. She highlights palaces and mansions, but she also takes readers to animal homes and a certain famously folkloric shoe (whose iconic Old Woman manages a passel of multiethnic kids absorbed in daring games). One spread showcases “some folks” who “live on the road”; a band unloads its tour bus in front of a theater marquee. Ellis’ compelling ink and gouache paintings, in a palette of blue-grays, sepia and brick red, depict scenes ranging from mythical, underwater Atlantis to a distant moonscape. Another spread, depicting a garden and large building under connected, transparent domes, invites readers to wonder: “Who in the world lives here? / And why?” (Earth is seen as a distant blue marble.) Some of Ellis’ chosen depictions, oddly juxtaposed and stripped of any historical or cultural context due to the stylized design and spare text, become stereotypical. “Some homes are boats. / Some homes are wigwams.” A sailing ship’s crew seems poised to land near a trio of men clad in breechcloths—otherwise unidentified and unremarked upon.
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6529-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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