A stunningly illustrated, realistic look at the fashion industry whimsically narrated by a dress.
A dress recalls her life—from design to fashion show and museum—in this debut rhyming picture book.
After inviting readers on a journey through fashion, the narrator asserts: “I’m the little red dress, I’ll explain more with a rhyme.” The dress begins as a designer’s idea in a sketchbook. But she soon moves through all the stages of creation: finding the right fabric, getting dyed, and experimenting with dress forms and patterns until everything is just so. When the dress is worn by a model on the runway, the garment seems fit for success. But despite instant popularity, the dress soon lands in the archive. Then one day, she’s purchased for a museum as a vintage dress. In this series opener, Joseph deftly navigates the fashion process in lively poetry, making each step feel personal and important. The dress’s dismay at being archived and subsequent joy at becoming a fashion icon in a museum create empathy for an inanimate object, which is always depicted realistically in Borer’s beautiful, stylish illustrations. The mixed-media images make use of ink and watercolor in a way that captures the dress’s fluid movement. The minimalist faces leave room for the imagination to fill in the details. Though the majority are women, the diverse characters show the variety of people working in the fashion industry. Readers who appreciate biographies of fashion luminaries like Coco Chanel will enjoy this inventive spin.
A stunningly illustrated, realistic look at the fashion industry whimsically narrated by a dress.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-97045-5
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Little Red Fashion
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Uncomplicated fun that sets readers up for the earlier, more-complicated books to come.
Little Blue Truck and his pal Toad meet friends old and new on a springtime drive through the country.
This lift-the-flap, interactive entry in the popular Little Blue Truck series lacks the narrative strength and valuable life lessons of the original Little Blue Truck (2008) and its sequel, Little Blue Truck Leads the Way (2009). Both of those books, published for preschoolers rather than toddlers, featured rich storylines, dramatic, kinetic illustrations, and simple but valuable life lessons—the folly of taking oneself too seriously, the importance of friends, and the virtue of taking turns, for example. At about half the length and with half as much text as the aforementioned titles, this volume is a much quicker read. Less a story than a vernal celebration, the book depicts a bucolic drive through farmland and encounters with various animals and their young along the way. Beautifully rendered two-page tableaux teem with butterflies, blossoms, and vibrant pastel, springtime colors. Little Blue greets a sheep standing in the door of a barn: “Yoo-hoo, Sheep! / Beep-beep! / What’s new?” Folding back the durable, card-stock flap reveals the barn’s interior and an adorable set of twin lambs. Encounters with a duck and nine ducklings, a cow with a calf, a pig with 10 (!) piglets, a family of bunnies, and a chicken with a freshly hatched chick provide ample opportunity for counting and vocabulary work.
Uncomplicated fun that sets readers up for the earlier, more-complicated books to come. (Board book. 1-4)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-544-93809-0
Page Count: 16
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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