An enchanting bedtime tale to be read over and over again.
A young woodland child is on the hunt for a bedtime story in Grant and Campbell’s debut collaboration.
“They say there’s a girl / Who lives by the woods / In a crooked old house / With no garden but gloom.” So begins the tale of the small, pale-skinned, nymphlike girl named Wee Sister Strange who wanders the woods at night. She calls to owls, rides on the back of a bear, climbs to the tops of the trees, and dives to the bottom of a bog. But it is not until she comes to “a snug little house / With one window aglow” that Wee Sister Strange finds what she has been searching for—a bedtime story. Inside the house, tucked into bed, is another young child with dark hair and brown skin, whose mother is reading a familiar-looking picture book as the text proclaims, “And there’s you in your bed / With this book ’neath your nose!” Campbell’s illustrations give Sister’s nighttime world shape and depth with emphatic splashes of light, while Grant’s deployment of verse draws readers further and further in until, with a quiet metafictive twist, they find themselves reflected in both text and illustrations, gracefully aligned with the sleepy young reader of color in the book.
An enchanting bedtime tale to be read over and over again. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-50879-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers will close this book loving their small part of the world a little more.
This picture book seems to contain everything in the world.
Everything in this story is connected to everything else. An acorn, held by a child, appears on the opening pages: “Within it grows a forest.” Following a spread of trees in a wood, we’re told, “And within that forest / towers an oak tree, tall and grand.” Scientifically minded adults may be reminded of an atom, too small to see but filled with quarks and neutrons and electrons. Later, the child catches a raindrop and starts to imagine where it came from—from “the depths of the sea” to a rain cloud to the child’s hand, and if it had landed back in the ocean, it might have kept traveling to a distant shore. Conti’s illustrations show the child watching that shore through a spyglass. Some of the items in the illustrations are a little frightening, like the rain cloud, painted in the heaviest blues and grays and blacks. But they’re beautiful, too. The fields of grass appear to contain every shade of green. Every item in the book, even a grain of sand, is as beautiful in both its simplicity and complexity. The child and other characters who appear are light-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Readers will close this book loving their small part of the world a little more. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 9780762479870
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
A visual success conjuring up the best about the seasons’ changes.
As a child walks through woods and town, summer turns to fall, and the natural world is met with a friendly hello.
A slim, brown child with a black-haired bob and hipster clothes stands on a stoop, ready to greet the late summer morning. On this picturesque journey through the seasons, the protagonist’s cordial salutation—whether made to blue jays and beavers or to the thunder and wind—is always the same: “Hello, [object].” And all amiably respond, providing tidbits of information about themselves. Unfortunately, their chatty replies miss the rhythm and easy conversational style that would make this shine as a read-aloud. It’s a shame, since the artist’s lush, evocative digital illustrations so perfectly capture the changing seasons in both the countryside and the town’s streets. To further accentuate the subject matter, Pak makes every spread a panorama, allowing readers to see and feel the various environments and habitats. Working in the tradition of such artists as Richard Scarry and Mary Blair, he takes a graphic approach, illustrating a world with simplified characters and shapes, layers of textures, and bold colors. Repeat visits will reveal new stories, such as the child’s collection and distribution of a carefully crafted bouquet to other people, whose diversity refreshingly reflects a range of skin tones, hairstyles, body types, and interests.
A visual success conjuring up the best about the seasons’ changes. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62779-415-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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