Competent illustrations, muddied storyline.
A little girl who loves to draw is shy about showing her pictures to anyone.
Young Lily is “afraid of what others might think of her drawings, so she [keeps] her pictures hidden in her sketchbook.” While author/illustrator Seal’s illustrations are varied in their presentation—double-page spreads are interspersed with spot illustrations, vignettes, and full-page bleeds—the overall presentation doesn’t sparkle as a book about art should. The characters’ expressions are uniformly pleasant, and the illustrations mostly mirror the text. A few notable illustrations reach beyond, however, as when Lily’s imagination is visually underscored by her drawing of a rainy day and a poignant moment when she draws herself in a group of children. The storyline inevitably engineers that Lily’s drawings are accidently seen by the townspeople—a gust of wind scatters them—and Lily is mortified until she realizes that people are praising them. Strangely, here the storyline moves from confidence in drawing to confidence in telling stories as, “for the first time in Lily’s life, words came spilling out of her.” The final illustration and its accompanying text add to this perplexity by showing Lily surrounded by new friends admiring her pictures, with the words: “And now she’d found a voice, and friends to share them with.” This conflation of storylines, strange grammar aside, is just plain confusing. Lily presents white while other residents of her picturesque town are somewhat diverse.
Competent illustrations, muddied storyline. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: March 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4413-2937-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Peter Pauper Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Loewen’s story is a simple snapshot of kindergarten graduation day, and it stays true to form, with Yoshikawa’s artwork resembling photos that might be placed in an album—and the illustrations cheer, a mixed media of saturated color, remarkable depth and joyful expression. The author comfortably captures the hesitations of making the jump from kindergarten to first grade without making a fuss about it, and she makes the prospect something worth the effort. Trepidation aside, this is a reminder of how much fun kindergarten was: your own cubbyhole, the Halloween parade, losing a tooth, “the last time we’ll ever sit criss-cross applesauce together.” But there is also the fledgling’s pleasure at shucking off the past—swabbing the desks, tossing out the stubbiest crayons, taking the pictures off the wall—and surging into the future. Then there is graduation itself: donning the mortarboards, trooping into the auditorium—“Mr. Meyer starts playing a serious song on the piano. It makes me want to cry. It makes me want to march”—which will likely have a few adult readers feeling the same. (Picture book. 4-5)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7614-5807-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
This long-running British series (the first Little Princess book was published in 1986) has been adapted for television there. In this installment, her dad (in a jacket and tie, wearing his crown) has read her a story and is about to turn off the light when the Little Princess shouts, “I WANT MY LIGHT ON!”—with her entire face subsumed into one of those scarlet, tooth-edged mouths. She’s not afraid of the dark but of ghosts. Dad checks under the bed, and General, Admiral, Doctor and Maid assure her there are no ghosts. The Little Princess’s room is a bright yellow, but readers see glimpses of the castle’s arches and stone steps past her doorway—and then there is a little ghost behind her bedpost, with a skeleton toy the shape of Little Princess’s own stuffie. Ghost and Princess scare each other, and he dashes off to his mother, who, as she stirs her pot of frog, worm and spider stew, assures him that there are no such things as little girls.... The pictures are clear, bold and exaggerated to great humorous effect. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7613-6443-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Andersen Press USA
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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