A lighthearted but searching and intelligent exploration of the concept and lore of walls, from dry-stone structures to honeycombs and tin cans. Succintly phrased in sprightly verse (``There are brick walls and thick walls and walls owned by cats,/and deep underground there are cave walls, with bats''), supplemented with labels (``arch''; ``picture rail'') and remarks of the appealing Humpty-Dumpty-like figures that people Baron's carefully limned settings, plus the good egg himself, who adds an extra comic note to every spread. The idea is developed with imagination and in surprising depth, touching on structural strength, the old and new, diverse uses and surfaces, and even inhabitants, like toads or slugs. With much intriguing detail— and a particularly intriguing title spread of a many-cornered wall that, in Baron's artful perspective, makes a straight line across the pages: excellent nonfiction, sure to amuse. (Nonfiction. 5-9)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1993
ISBN: 1-56402-218-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1993
Chicken sexer? Breath odor evaluator? Cryptozoologist? Island caretaker? The choices dazzle! (Informational picture book....
From funeral clown to cheese sculptor, a tally of atypical trades.
This free-wheeling survey, framed as a visit to “The Great Hall of Jobs,” is designed to shake readers loose from simplistic notions of the world of work. Labarre opens with a generic sculpture gallery of, as she puts it, “The Classics”—doctor, dancer, farmer, athlete, chef, and the like—but quickly moves on, arranging busy cartoon figures by the dozen in kaleidoscopic arrays, with pithy captions describing each occupation. As changes of pace she also tucks in occasional challenges to match select workers (Las Vegas wedding minister, “ethical” hacker, motion-capture actor) with their distinctive tools or outfits. The actual chances of becoming, say, the queen’s warden of the swans or a professional mattress jumper, not to mention the nitty-gritty of physical or academic qualifications, income levels, and career paths, are left largely unspecified…but along with noting that new jobs are being invented all the time (as, in the illustration, museum workers wheel in a “vlogger” statue), the author closes with the perennial insight that it’s essential to love what you do and the millennial one that there’s nothing wrong with repeatedly switching horses midstream. The many adult figures and the gaggle of children (one in a wheelchair) visiting the “Hall” are diverse of feature, sex, and skin color.
Chicken sexer? Breath odor evaluator? Cryptozoologist? Island caretaker? The choices dazzle! (Informational picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1219-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
This attempt to explain the Pledge’s meaning to younger children is at least as simplistic as it is enlightening. Using a combination of torn paper and simple, fluidly brushed strokes, Raschka (Be Boy Buzz, p. 1310, etc.) supplies a brightly colored backdrop of stylized children and adults, against which the Pledge’s words, generally one by one, are printed in large type and glossed in smaller: “God. Many people believe that a democracy is how God thinks—every single person is important.” Martin and Sampson (Tricks or Treat?, below, etc.) fill in bits of the historical background, mentioning Frances Bellamy, the Pledge’s original composer, but not that his version was very different from the present one, and closing with a dizzying recapitulation: “The flag stands for our history, our inventions, our music, sports, literature, faith . . . ” Children curious about the meaning of what so many of them are compelled to promise every morning in school will get less lyrical, but more factual, commentary from June Swanson’s I Pledge Allegiance (1990). (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-7636-1648-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2002
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