Ambitious but weak.
An early-reader meditation on interdependence.
The backmatter explains that the book’s concept originated with the author’s wife during a July Fourth hike when she came up with the idea for an “Interdependence Day…to celebrate all the ways we are connected to one another and to the planet.” This note would have been better placed as frontmatter to guide readers into and through the book’s abstract meanderings. Throughout, words and pictures describe beings and their interconnectedness, but while the art is captivating in its graphic, sometimes nearly psychedelic play with color and form, meaning is elusive. The first image shows what appears to be a white celestial body surrounded by points of light. A page turn then reads, “I AM ONE,” beside a picture of what now seems to be a white smiley face atop two arms. “HERE IN A BODY,” reads the facing page, and that white being is now within the chest of a black body that’s Haring-like in its simplicity but with eyes looking at the internal being. The text then places the being “ALIVE IN A WORLD” that is “MADE OF AIR / AND OF CLOUD / MADE OF WATER / AND OF EARTH / AND SEED,” etc. The closing pages return to the two-in-one being and then show it with others, but ironically, there’s ultimately failure to make words and pictures work interdependently to express the central concept of interdependence.
Ambitious but weak. (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-943145-35-5
Page Count: 36
Publisher: TOON Books & Graphics
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
An introduction to Venus that shows the planet at her most verbally and visually vivacious.
The solar system’s hottest diva struts her stuff.
The titular character’s claim that she’s the only goddess among the planetary gods may leave partisans of “Gaea” (technically not an official name, but still) feeling a little miffed. That aside, Venus still has plenty to crow about—from having higher surface temperatures than Mercury, to sporting a day that’s longer than her year, to spinning so the sun comes up in the west. Joining McAnulty’s other solar system soliloquies with the same engaging mix of facts and attitude (“Earth has clouds. I don’t…just have clouds. I’m smothered in them!”), Venus shines up from the page. She sports a proud expression on her broad face, whether hovering with windswept golden locks over a seashell like her Botticellian counterpart or floating in space, waving to her earthly and celestial fans with stubby limbs. Closing with a review quiz and a roundup of basic statistics, this animated planetary self-portrait will give young readers more reason than ever to pay proper attention to the brightest of our non-stellar astronomical neighbors.
An introduction to Venus that shows the planet at her most verbally and visually vivacious. (bibliography) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781250334473
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Odd Dot
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so...
A pro bono Twinkie of a book invites readers to fly off in a magic plane to bring clean water to our planet’s oceans, deserts, and brown children.
Following a confusingly phrased suggestion beneath a soft-focus world map to “touch the Earth. Now touch where you live,” a shake of the volume transforms it into a plane with eyes and feathered wings that flies with the press of a flat, gray “button” painted onto the page. Pressing like buttons along the journey releases a gush of fresh water from the ground—and later, illogically, provides a filtration device that changes water “from yucky to clean”—for thirsty groups of smiling, brown-skinned people. At other stops, a tap on the button will “help irrigate the desert,” and touching floating bottles and other debris in the ocean supposedly makes it all disappear so the fish can return. The 20 children Coh places on a globe toward the end are varied of skin tone, but three of the four young saviors she plants in the flier’s cockpit as audience stand-ins are white. The closing poem isn’t so openly parochial, though it seldom rises above vague feel-good sentiments: “Love the Earth, the moon and sun. / All the children can be one.”
“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so easy to clean the place up and give everyone a drink? (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5107-2083-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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