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GRANPA

Name: GRANPA
Author: John Burningham
ISBN: 0099434083

by John Burningham ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1985

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The jacket drawing of a little girl clinging to her grandfather's shoulders conveys a joyous, adventuresome sharing—but leaves in doubt just what sort of vehicle (a horse-drawn cart, perhaps) they're breezing along in. And the contents—a different shared experience at each opening—are more ambiguous still: deliberately oblique, and inferential. Mostly the pit an adult's matter-of-factness against a child's imaginings. The two are in a greenhouse, where we are supposed to gather from the pictures that Granpa is transplanting seedlings from flats into pots. In Roman type (implicitly, Granpa): "There will not be room for all the little seeds to grow." In italics (implicitly, the little girl): "Do worms go to heaven?" To an adult ear, that may sound a cute non sequitur; most children are apt to take it as simple woolly-headedness. Another scene, one of the simpler to explain, has the pair looking out of the house in a rainstorm: "Noah knew the ark was not far from land when he saw the dove carrying the olive branch," says Granpa; "Could we float away in this house, Granpa?" says the little girl. Then, overleaf, he's saying—with no connection whatever: "That was not a nice thinS to say to Granpa." And at the last we have a mini-sequence, totally unforeshadowed, in which Granpa sits in his chair, sick; takes the little girl on his lap; and vanishes, presumed dead (!), as we see her silently gazing at his empty chair. There are ways to make scattered moments, and tenuous feelings, add up—but only in the pictures does the relationship register here.

Pub Date: March 1, 1985

ISBN: 0099434083

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: April 18, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1985

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

- BOOK REVIEW
AIR MILES
by John Burningham & Bill Salaman ; illustrated by Helen Oxenbury

- BOOK REVIEW
MOTOR MILES
by John Burningham ; illustrated by John Burningham

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WAY TO THE ZOO
by John Burningham ; illustrated by John Burningham

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CARPENTER'S HELPER

by Sybil Rosen ; illustrated by Camille Garoche ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2021

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.

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A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.

Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: March 16, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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HOLES

by Louis Sachar ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998

Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...

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Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).

Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.

Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)