An encouraging and engaging tale about the positive effects of kind words.
A pink-skinned girl falls into a funk when her golden community makes fun of her color in this bright picture book about embracing unique qualities.
Zinnia lives in a golden-toned world, surrounded by golden people. Being pink “made her feel extra special. That is, she loved being pink until her first day of school.” When her new classmates tell her that pink stinks, Zinnia starts to hate her color. Taking a cue from an old story, she sneaks down the Cloud Escalator on a quest to the Kaleidoscope Volcano to change her color. Along the way, she meets a green boy, a blue girl, and an orange boy who try to help her see her own special qualities. When it turns out Kaleidoscope Volcano can’t change her color after all, she realizes her new friends have the right idea. Using backgrounds that stick to shades of a single color to emphasize the bold hues of the characters, Catling creates a vibrant, eye-catching setting. Benthin’s accessible text, though dense on some pages, feels true to how mean words can change something children love about themselves into something they hate—and how kindness can turn that around. Zinnia’s friendly, outgoing nature and her self-consciousness make her a hero easy to empathize with in this enjoyable story. While there’s no good solution presented here to the bullying, readers will root for Zinnia to keep her cool when she returns to class.
An encouraging and engaging tale about the positive effects of kind words.Pub Date: May 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73399-002-8
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Kaleidoscope Volcano
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift.
A paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere.
This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. Makes sense: aren’t parents and other close family members children’s first teachers? This duality suggests that the book might be best shared one-on-one between a nostalgic adult and a child who’s developed some self-confidence, having learned a thing or two from a parent, grandparent, older relative, or classroom instructor.
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943200-08-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Compendium
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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