A dream team of talent show and tell a delightful story of summers gone by.
Kids burst out of school and into summer vacation.
Now they can play outside all day till the streetlights come on, when moms call them home. This nostalgic homage to Woodson’s childhood in her beloved Brooklyn evokes the senses: the sounds of laughter and double Dutch rhymes, the sight of sidewalk chalk and bottle cap games, and the taste of an ice cream cone with rainbow sprinkles from the ice cream truck. The refrain, “In Brooklyn / in the summer / not so long ago,” appears in text the color of summer heat: red, orange, yellow. The bell-bottom plaid pants; white, knee-high, color-ringed tube socks; and loud-and-proud Afros pinpoint this story’s ’60s or ’70s setting. The amazing diversity of the neighborhood comes through both in Espinosa’s lively, colorful retro illustrations, which depict Black, brown, and White children, and Woodson’s lyrical text, which describes kids calling “out to each other / in Spanish / in English / in Polish / in German / in Chinese.” They also get along well, with the older kids looking out for the younger ones and those with ice cream money sharing with those without “because some days the ones with no money / were us.” Espinosa depicts many characters with mouths wide open, emphasizing their unbridled delight and loudness. Author and illustrator offer a refreshing reminder of a pre-internet time when full-immersion play was the summer activity and kids took full advantage. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A dream team of talent show and tell a delightful story of summers gone by. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-399-54549-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If a school pep rally could walk and talk, this kid would be it.
A great prescription for kids who tremble at the thought of their first day of school.
A young African American girl with deep brown skin, round cheeks, and an infectious smile spends her first day of school celebrating spirit in many ways. With her hair in two gigantic puffballs, she shows her school spirit with snazzy shoes (“STOMP, STOMP!”), her backpack (“ZIP, ZIP!”), and her “loud…clear” singing in class (“ABC, 123!”). Her spirit surfaces in onomatopoeic words on nearly every double-page spread, contributing to the high energy of the story. Morrison’s vibrant oil paintings, reminiscent of those by artist and NFL player Ernie Barnes, feature close-up perspectives of the little girl and everyone she encounters while they reveal lots of diversity both in her neighborhood and at school. She even has a black male teacher—a rare demographic in American elementary schools—who captivates his class during storytime. Like its predecessors, I Got the Rhythm(2014) and I Got the Christmas Spirit (2018), this picture book establishes a sentence pattern that persists, one that will help nascent readers predict what comes next. Each line begins with a personal pronoun and an active-voice verb—“I share,” “I breathe,” “we sing,” etc.—that exudes this protagonist’s enthusiasm for school.
If a school pep rally could walk and talk, this kid would be it. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0261-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
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