There’s much to love here.
A picture book from Down Under that aims to uplift every body.
A Kickstarter campaign funded this picture book, which Australian author Sanders hopes “will comfort…guide…and empower” readers—especially “girls and those who identify as a girl.” Brazillian illustrator Rossetti endeavors to be inclusive, with depictions of a diverse range of bodies, including girls and women with a range of skin tones, hair textures and colors, and body types as well as a range of gender presentations and some visible disabilities. Some people have visible freckles, acne, body hair, cellulite, and stretch marks, and one person appears to have vitiligo. It is hard to track any individual characters from one spread to the next, but that isn’t as necessary as it would be if the text had a narrative. It doesn’t. Instead, this is a book that might best be described as a self-help picture book, filled with affirmations and explicit urgings toward self-care, self-love, and acceptance of others. The text also provides strategies for self-affirmation and for seeking help and support, though some tips are potentially exclusive of people with mobility disabilities and blind or deaf people. This edition’s backmatter offers a list of U.S.–based support organizations, with a pointer to www.re-shape.info for resources in other countries.
There’s much to love here. (Picture book. 3-12)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7112-5242-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share.
A multiaward–winning author recalls her childhood and the joy of becoming a writer.
Writing in free verse, Woodson starts with her 1963 birth in Ohio during the civil rights movement, when America is “a country caught / / between Black and White.” But while evoking names such as Malcolm, Martin, James, Rosa and Ruby, her story is also one of family: her father’s people in Ohio and her mother’s people in South Carolina. Moving south to live with her maternal grandmother, she is in a world of sweet peas and collards, getting her hair straightened and avoiding segregated stores with her grandmother. As the writer inside slowly grows, she listens to family stories and fills her days and evenings as a Jehovah’s Witness, activities that continue after a move to Brooklyn to reunite with her mother. The gift of a composition notebook, the experience of reading John Steptoe’s Stevieand Langston Hughes’ poetry, and seeing letters turn into words and words into thoughts all reinforce her conviction that “[W]ords are my brilliance.” Woodson cherishes her memories and shares them with a graceful lyricism; her lovingly wrought vignettes of country and city streets will linger long after the page is turned.
For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share. (Memoir/poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-25251-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
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