A pretty but overworked addition to the well-stocked shelf of tributes to a silent but nonetheless eloquent voice for peace.
The story of “Hiroshima’s most famous victim” is matched to delicate sepia illustrations decorated with images of brightly patterned origami cranes.
Oozing sentimentality so gooey it’s a wonder the pages can be separated, this version of the often told tale is narrated by Sadako's cat. It opens with a peaceful August morning overshadowed by a “huge black cloud” before cutting ahead 10 years to Sadako’s hospitalization. The cat curls up in her lap to share visions of future outings together (which seems at best an insensitive brand of comfort). The cat recounts how the girl “fell gently asleep and flew away with 1000 paper cranes” and then embarks on a mission to “carry Sadako’s story out into the world.” Though the numerous folded cranes shine out against pale backdrops in the fine-lined illustrations, Loske depicts the cat as disquietingly eyeless until a final view and, along with Sadako and the other white-faced human figures, with fiery red cheek patches that look like clown makeup. In her afterword, the author assures readers that Sadako “actually lived,” but this mannered, anemic portrayal of that life isn’t likely to make them care.
A pretty but overworked addition to the well-stocked shelf of tributes to a silent but nonetheless eloquent voice for peace. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-988-8341-00-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: minedition
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
An undistinguished addition to the infuriatingly overstuffed shelves of anger-management treatises.
Pout-Pout goes off the deep end.
Plainly afflicted with anger issues, Mr. Fish leverages a broken knickknack, difficulty finding glue, and the mild reactions of his neighbors to his plight into a towering, out-of-control tantrum. Mrs. Squid offers a tried-and-true (though, at least for a fish, physically impossible) counterstrategy: “To get started, simply breathe. / Then slowly count from one to ten / To counteract the seethe.” Miss Shimmer, another fish, suggests using his words to talk out his feelings…which he does (though only in the pictures, as Diesen declines to use her words to describe what he actually says). Finally, “with words and self-compassion / I bring anger to a stop,” and once he’s gotten his “grrrrr” out, the glue even turns up so that in no time fish and fracture are both “good as new.” Unlike the “seethe” in Molly Bang’s When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry… (1999) or Polly Dunbar’s Red Red Red (2020), the rage here comes across as manufactured rather than genuine—and the coping techniques are more described in general terms than actually demonstrated. Hanna’s cartoon cast of fancifully colored deep-sea denizens is as googly-eyed as ever. He adds some amusing details, as with the labels on Mr. Fish’s storage bins (“Might Need Someday” and “Not Sure will look later”), but the souvenir from “Machoo Poochy” is an unfortunate choice. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at 75% of actual size.)
An undistinguished addition to the infuriatingly overstuffed shelves of anger-management treatises. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-30935-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers who (inexplicably) find David Lawrence’s Pickle and Penguin (2004) just too weird may settle in more comfortably...
A lad finds a penguin on his doorstep and resolutely sets out to return it in this briefly told import.
Eventually, he ends up rowing it all the way back to Antarctica, braving waves and storms, filling in the time by telling it stories. But then, feeling lonely after he drops his silent charge off, he belatedly realizes that it was probably lonely too, and turns back to find it. Seeing Jeffers’s small, distant figures in wide, simply brushed land- and sea-scapes, young viewers will probably cotton to the penguin’s feelings before the boy himself does—but all’s well that ends well, and the reunited companions are last seen adrift together in the wide blue sea.
Readers who (inexplicably) find David Lawrence’s Pickle and Penguin (2004) just too weird may settle in more comfortably with this—slightly—less offbeat friendship tale. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-399-24503-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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