Beryl knows she will love, love, love her new baby sister, certain to be as sweet as a chocolate babka. But when her father calls her and her little brother Sam from the hospital and happily shouts “It’s a boy!” she faces her worst nightmare: “Two baby brothers. Double trouble.” This funny, heartwarming early chapter book about embracing (and rejecting) a new baby in the house has shades of Kevin Henkes’s Julius, the Baby of the World and a charm all its own. As Beryl concocts a strategy to make baby Zachary disappear, Uncle Morty conjures some tricks of his own to help his niece and nephew accept the small intruder as a member of the family, a long line of “gorgeous genius” babies. In the end, Beryl decides she doesn’t want to make baby Zach disappear after all. Chess’s soft, rounded, dePaola-style illustrations are as warm, comical, and appealing as the story. A detailed Eastern European recipe for chocolate babka tops off an already enticing offering for the sibling-challenged. (Illustrated fiction. 6-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2004
ISBN: 0-618-23489-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Clarion
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
Categories: CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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A gentle voice and familiar pitfalls characterize this tale of a boy navigating the risky road to responsibility.
Gavin is new to his neighborhood and Carver Elementary. He likes his new friend, Richard, and has a typically contentious relationship with his older sister, Danielle. When Gavin’s desire to impress Richard sets off a disastrous chain of events, the boy struggles to evade responsibility for his actions. “After all, it isn’t his fault that Danielle’s snow globe got broken. Sure, he shouldn’t have been in her room—but then, she shouldn’t be keeping candy in her room to tempt him. Anybody would be tempted. Anybody!” opines Gavin once he learns the punishment for his crime. While Gavin has a charming Everyboy quality, and his aversion to Aunt Myrtle’s yapping little dog rings true, little about Gavin distinguishes him from other trouble-prone protagonists. He is, regrettably, forgettable. Coretta Scott King Honor winner English (Francie, 1999) is a teacher whose storytelling usually benefits from her day job. Unfortunately, the pizzazz of classroom chaos is largely absent from this series opener.
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for subsequent volumes. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-97044-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Clarion
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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In describing how his parents met, Say continues to explore the ways that differing cultures can harmonize; raised near San Francisco and known as May everywhere except at home, where she is Masako, the child who will grow up to be Say’s mother becomes a misfit when her family moves back to Japan. Rebelling against attempts to force her into the mold of a traditional Japanese woman, she leaves for Osaka, finds work as a department store translator, and meets Joseph, a Chinese businessman who not only speaks English, but prefers tea with milk and sugar, and persuades her that “home isn’t a place or a building that’s ready-made or waiting for you, in America or anywhere else.” Painted with characteristic control and restraint, Say’s illustrations, largely portraits, begin with a sepia view of a sullen child in a kimono, gradually take on distinct, subdued color, and end with a formal shot of the smiling young couple in Western dress. A stately cousin to Ina R. Friedman’s How My Parents Learned To Eat (1984), also illustrated by Say. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-90495-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
Categories: CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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