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CHERRY BLOSSOM AND PAPER PLANES

Name: CHERRY BLOSSOM AND PAPER PLANES
Author: Jef Aerts
ISBN: 978-178250-561-7

by Jef Aerts ; illustrated by Sanne te Loo ; translated by Polly Lawson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 21, 2020

Memorable and visually rich.

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A deep connection between friends blossoms after winter.

Adin and Dina live on a fruit farm, blonde, white Dina “at the top of the hill” and black-haired, brown-skinned Adin, whose mother works picking fruit, “at the bottom.” So close that each “knew what the other one was thinking,” they share a love of cherries, climbing into the trees to eat the fruit and saving the pits to plant around the village. Te Loo’s gouache-and-pen illustrations are gentle, filled with greens and yellows that are echoed in the village and, later, more subtly, in the city Adin and his mother move to. Each double-page spread shows a world that is wide yet comfortably familiar. When Adin and his mother leave, the sense of loss is conveyed simply. Dina presents Adin with a farewell bag of cherry pits, “self-picked and self-spat out.” When she visits him in the city Dina is momentarily without words seeing Adin, hair combed, in “smart new clothes.” But Adin has been tossing cherry pits from his apartment balcony and shows Dina how he’s found a way to send the seeds even farther via paper plane. When spring arrives the cherry trees seem to light a path between the two friends. Aerts’ story, translated from the Dutch, resonates honestly and clearly with reassurance that friendship can weather changes and bridge distances.

Memorable and visually rich. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020

ISBN: 978-178250-561-7

Page Count: 48

Publisher: Floris

Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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THE BLUE WINGS
by Jef Aerts ; illustrated by Martijn van der Linden ; translated by Laura Watkinson

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LOVE FROM THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR

by Eric Carle ; illustrated by Eric Carle ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 15, 2015

Safe to creep on by.

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Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.

In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.

Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)

Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE FOOD?
edited by Eric Carle

- BOOK REVIEW
WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE BUG?
edited by Eric Carle

- BOOK REVIEW
MY FIRST I SEE YOU
by Eric Carle ; illustrated by Eric Carle

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.

The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)