Realistically conveying the close affinity of boys for bikes anywhere in the world, Olaleye (In the Rainfield, 2000) also introduces the young reader to a small slice of village life in contemporary western Nigeria. Lateef, a spunky young boy, wants to rent a bike, but doesn’t have the wherewithal to do so, until he starts earning his own money by selling mushrooms and firewood. He starts off on a small bike, but won’t rest until he is allowed to rent the big, shiny, red one, the pride of the fleet. As usual, a boy’s derring-do leads to a fall and Lateef has a doozy. In order to repay the bike-owner, Lateef offers to work for him. He pays his debt honorably and builds a bike of his own from spare parts. Demarest’s (Someday We’ll Have Very Good Manners, 2000, etc.) energetic watercolors, warm in tone with yellow skies and brown skins, roads and clothing, impart a modest sense of life in an African country, but there are not enough specific details here in either text or pictures to satisfy a child’s curiosity. Although the illustrator paints women in traditional clothing, his generalized depictions do not reflect the fabrics used or the head coverings worn. The text uses a few onomatopoetic words to quicken the tempo: “Bump! Thump! Whomp!”—but this device is not enough to give the story a true voice. Ifeoma Onyefulu’s photo essays, such as Ogbo: Sharing Life in an African Village (1996) give a stronger picture of life in Nigeria, while Tollolwa M. Mollel’s My Rows and Piles of Coins (1999), set in Tanzania, is a more effective story about a boy who must earn money to buy a bicycle. Pleasant, but pedestrian. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-531-30290-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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BOOK REVIEW
As atmospheric as its companion, Twilight Comes Twice, this tone poem pairs poetically intense writing with luminescent oils featuring widely spaced houses, open lawns, and clumps of autumnal trees, all lit by a huge full moon. Fletcher tracks that moon’s nocturnal path in language rich in metaphor: “With silent slippers / it climbs the night stairs,” “staining earth and sky with a ghostly glow,” lighting up a child’s bedroom, the wings of a small plane, moonflowers, and, ranging further afield, harbor waves and the shells of turtle hatchlings on a beach. Using creamy brushwork and subtly muted colors, Kiesler depicts each landscape, each night creature from Luna moths to a sleepless child and her cat, as well as the great moon sweeping across star-flecked skies, from varied but never vertiginous angles. Closing with moonset, as dawn illuminates the world with a different kind of light, this makes peaceful reading either in season, or on any moonlit night. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2003
ISBN: 0-618-16451-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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Dedicated “to children everywhere sitting in cardboard boxes,” this elemental debut depicts a bunny with big, looping ears demonstrating to a rather thick, unseen questioner (“Are you still standing around in that box?”) that what might look like an ordinary carton is actually a race car, a mountain, a burning building, a spaceship or anything else the imagination might dream up. Portis pairs each question and increasingly emphatic response with a playscape of Crockett Johnson–style simplicity, digitally drawn with single red and black lines against generally pale color fields. Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina Russo’s Big Brown Box (2000) or Dana Kessimakis Smith’s Brave Spaceboy (2005). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-112322-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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