This survey of languages is fun but superficial.
This graphic survey of onomatopoeias takes on a global demographic of sounds.
The narrator is a smiling, golden star that appears on every page, introducing readers to an individual sound as it is expressed in different languages. Each chapter represents a category of sounds, starting with animal sounds, then moving on to loud noises and sounds the human body makes, before ending with the expressive sounds of emotions. Refreshingly, the survey ventures beyond Western European languages, including Malay, Latvian, Punjabi, Telugu, and Filipino, among others. Languages that do not use the Roman alphabet are transliterated, so an Arabic lion says, “zayiyr”; when bubbles pop in Russia they go, “chpok!”; and a Korean clock goes, “ddok ddak.” Though it’s easy to see how children can have fun mimicking the sounds expressed in the speech bubbles that dot the colorful cartoon illustrations, there is no appreciable education about the cultures represented. Some pages feature illustrations of human characters of various skin colors. While, admirably, there seems to be no racial correspondence of skin color to language, the narrator makes some jokes that fall flat, as when it declares its preference for classical music when a Danish duck says “rap,” or seems to make fun of Korean screams. There is no map to locate languages geographically for readers.
This survey of languages is fun but superficial. (Graphic nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5248-5076-0
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many.
Young Raina is 9 when she throws up for the first time that she remembers, due to a stomach bug. Even a year later, when she is in fifth grade, she fears getting sick.
Raina begins having regular stomachaches that keep her home from school. She worries about sharing food with her friends and eating certain kinds of foods, afraid of getting sick or food poisoning. Raina’s mother enrolls her in therapy. At first Raina isn’t sure about seeing a therapist, but over time she develops healthy coping mechanisms to deal with her stress and anxiety. Her therapist helps her learn to ground herself and relax, and in turn she teaches her classmates for a school project. Amping up the green, wavy lines to evoke Raina’s nausea, Telgemeier brilliantly produces extremely accurate visual representations of stress and anxiety. Thought bubbles surround Raina in some panels, crowding her with anxious “what if”s, while in others her negative self-talk appears to be literally crushing her. Even as she copes with anxiety disorder and what is eventually diagnosed as mild irritable bowel syndrome, she experiences the typical stresses of school life, going from cheer to panic in the blink of an eye. Raina is white, and her classmates are diverse; one best friend is Korean American.
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many. (Graphic memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-545-85251-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
A painful and painfully recognizable tale of one girl’s struggle to make and keep “one good friend.” (author’s note)...
A truth-telling graphic memoir whose theme song could be Johnny Lee’s old country song “Lookin’ for Love in all the Wrong Places.”
Shannon, depicted in Pham’s clear, appealing panels as a redheaded white girl, starts kindergarten in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1979, and her story ends just before sixth grade. Desperately longing to be in “the group” at school, Shannon suffers persistent bullying, particularly from a mean girl, Jenny, which leads to chronic stomachaches, missing school, and doctor visits. Contemporary readers will recognize behaviors indicative of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but the doctor calls it anxiety and tells Shannon to stop worrying. Instead of being a place of solace, home adds to Shannon’s stress. The middle child of five, she suffers abuse from her oldest sibling, Wendy, whom Pham often portrays as a fierce, gigantic bear and whom readers see their mother worrying about from the beginning. The protagonist’s faith (presented as generically Christian) surfaces overtly a few times but mostly seems to provide a moral compass for Shannon as she negotiates these complicated relationships. This episodic story sometimes sticks too close to the truth for comfort, but readers will appreciate Shannon’s fantastic imagination that lightens her tough journey toward courage and self-acceptance.
A painful and painfully recognizable tale of one girl’s struggle to make and keep “one good friend.” (author’s note) (Graphic memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62672-416-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
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