After waiting and waiting for his distracted mother to take him to get his favorite Chinese noodles, a little boy decides he’s big enough to walk his neighborhood alone. Imagining the trip, everyday people and places suddenly seem freaky, strange and sinister. Scary wolf faces appear on shop owners and neighbors, cackling creepily. Young readers will feel the boy’s heart quicken as familiar spots (the toy shop, the corner store, the Chinese restaurant) become terrifying wolf dens. They will also relate to vying for adult attention. The mother’s face is often obscured, buried in a purse, a cabinet, dishes, the fridge. Ephemera, photos, patterns, drawings and watercolors create crafty, engaging compositions. Children will enjoy extracting reproduced images from illustrated ones, a perfect exercise in a book about separating fearsome fantasy from reality. When the boy shares his terror with the mother, she finally establishes eye contact and promises to “be right there with you.” This quirky, somewhat dark picture book cleverly projects the skewed perspective of a worrier; real things and imagined ones easily get mixed up, both on these pages and in the boy’s mind. (Picture book. 2-6)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-374-38060-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
Sentimental but effective.
A book aimed at easing separation anxiety and reinforcing bonds.
Twins Liza and Jeremy awaken during a thunderstorm and go to their mother for comfort. She reassures them that they’re safe and says, “You know we’re always together, no matter what,” when they object to returning to bed. She then explains that when she was a child her mother told her about the titular “Invisible String,” encouraging them to envision it as a link between them no matter what. “People who love each other are always connected by a very special String made of love,” she tells them, reinforcing this idea as they proceed to imagine various scenarios, fantastic and otherwise, that might cause them to be separated in body. She also affirms that this string can “reach all the way to Uncle Brian in heaven” and that it doesn’t go away if she’s angry with them or when they have conflicts. As they go to bed, reassured, the children, who present white, imagine their friends and diverse people around the world connected with invisible strings, promoting a vision of global unity and empathy. While the writing often feels labored and needlessly repetitive, Lew-Vriethoff’s playful cartoon art enhances and lightens the message-driven text, which was originally published in 2000 with illustrations by Geoff Stevenson.
Sentimental but effective. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-48623-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
The visual details invite interaction, making it a good choice for storytime or solo inspection.
It’s a quiet day, until….
“I have a bot!” An excited child’s happiness is short-lived, for the remote-controlled toy escapes its wireless tether and begins an ascent up the side of a skyscraper. The building’s doorman launches a race to recover the bot, and soon everyone wants to help. Attempts to retrieve the bot, which is rendered as a red rectangle with a propeller, arms, and a rudimentary face, go from the mundanity of a broom to the absurd—a bright orange beehive hairdo and a person-sized Venus’ flytrap are just some of the silly implements the building’s occupants use to try to rein in the bot. Each double-page spread reveals another level of the building—and further visual hijinks—as the bot makes its way to the top, where an unexpected hero waits (keep an eye out for falling bananas). The tall, narrow trim size echoes the shape of the skyscraper, providing a sense of height as the bot rises. Text is minimal; short declarations in tidy black dialogue bubbles with white courier-style typeface leave the primary-colored, blocky art to effectively carry the story. Facial expressions—both human and bot—are comically spot-on. The bot-owning child has light skin, and there are several people of color among those trying to rescue the bot. One person wears a kufi.
The visual details invite interaction, making it a good choice for storytime or solo inspection. (Picture book. 2-6)Pub Date: July 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-425-28881-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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