A well-illustrated introduction to a few basic science facts.
A frog learns a little about science in Jennings’ picture book.
Lily Faye just wants to bask in the sun, but there’s a problem: An old oak tree is casting a long shadow across her part of the pond. She asks the tree, “Are you just going to stand there and block the sun? What use are you?” The oak frowns, and Lily Faye hops away. She runs into Bluefish, who tells her the building nearby is a school for mammals known as boys and girls. Lily Faye leaps up to the school window, where a human teacher is explaining how trees make all life on Earth possible by turning carbon dioxide into oxygen. She reconsiders her unkind words to the oak tree, returns to the pond, and apologizes. The tree accepts and parts its branches to flood the frog’s lily pad with sunlight. Raileanu’s illustrations are in a class of their own, eschewing the soft pastels many readers expect of picture books. Characters are highly stylized, and saturated colors, bordering on lurid, give the book a late-1970s Golden Book vibe. Some of the science may not be enough for curious readers: Bluefish says Lily Faye is an amphibian but doesn’t detail what that means, and how carbon dioxide becomes oxygen isn’t explained. That said, what’s presented is simple and easy to understand.
A well-illustrated introduction to a few basic science facts.Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9856960-1-6
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Lioness Publishing House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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