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WE ARE ALL ME

Name: WE ARE ALL ME
Author: Jordan Crane
ISBN: 978-1-943145-35-5

by Jordan Crane ; illustrated by Jordan Crane ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018

Ambitious but weak.

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS

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TOUCH THE EARTH

From the Julian Lennon White Feather Flier Adventure series , Vol. 1

by Julian Lennon with Bart Davis ; illustrated by Smiljana Coh ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 11, 2017

“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...

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
HEAL THE EARTH
by Julian Lennon & Bart Davis ; illustrated by Smiljana Coh

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PLUTO GETS THE CALL

by Adam Rex ; illustrated by Laurie Keller ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019

Hurray for the underdog.

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Heart (-shaped surface feature) literally broken by its demotion from planet status, Pluto glumly conducts readers on a tour of the solar system.

You’d be bummed, too. Angrily rejecting the suggestions of “mean scientists” from Earth that “ice dwarf” or “plutoid” might serve as well (“Would you like to be called humanoid?”), Pluto drifts out of the Kuiper Belt to lead readers past the so-called “real” planets in succession. All sport faces with googly eyes in Keller’s bright illustrations, and distinct personalities, too—but also actual physical characteristics (“Neptune is pretty icy. And gassy. I’m not being mean, he just is”) that are supplemented by pages of “fun facts” at the end. Having fended off Saturn’s flirtation, endured Jupiter’s stormy reception (“Keep OFF THE GAS!”) and relentless mockery from the asteroids, and given Earth the cold shoulder, Pluto at last takes the sympathetic suggestion of Venus and Mercury to talk to the Sun. “She’s pretty bright.” A (what else?) warm welcome, plus our local star’s comforting reminders that every celestial body is unique (though “people talk about Uranus for reasons I don’t really want to get into”), and anyway, scientists are still arguing the matter because that’s what “science” is all about, mend Pluto’s heart at last: “Whatever I’m called, I’ll always be PLUTO!”

Hurray for the underdog. (afterword) (Informational picture book. 6-8)