A song made famous by a host of singers has become a picture book that well suits the lyric’s eloquent plea for universal peace and understanding. Based on a utopian vision of what the world could and should be like, the intricate folk-art drawings show the earth, first from a great distance, then increasingly closer and more intimately. As the text shifts from describing scenes of harmony and plenty to more ominous images of war and want, the illustrations depict troubled faces in the windows of homes and military activity in the background. The spare text and powerful images work in accord to provide educators and parents with a book that can be used to stimulate discussion of many different issues. (Picture book. 7-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-525-45872-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
From Dodds (The Shape of Things, 1994, not reviewed, etc.), a rhyming, reckless text that makes a math process pleasurably solvable; Mitchell’s illustrative debut features a smashing cast of 1930s characters and a playfulness that will keep readers guessing. The premise is a Great Race: at the sound of the gun, 80 bicycle racers take off at top speed. The path diverges at the top of a cliff, and half the racers hurtle forever downward and right out of the race and the book. The remaining 40 racers determinedly continue in boats, their curls, spyglasses, eye patches, matronly upswept hairdos, and Clara Bow—lips intact. Whirlpools erupt to divide them again and wreck their ships, so it’s time to grab the next horse and ride on. The race continues, despite abrupt changes in modes of transportation and in the number of racers that dwindle by disastrous divisions, until a single winner glides over the finish line in a single-prop plane. The pace is so breathless and engaging that the book’s didactic origins all but disappear; few readers will notice that they’ve just finished a math problem, and most will want to go over all the action again. (Picture book. 5-10)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7636-0442-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
In this admiring memoir of her father as a young ham radio operator in New York City during the 1920s, Barasch pulls readers into the initiate world of Morse code and early intercontinental communications. Not many children bitten by the radio bug went on to get their amateur operator’s license, but Barasch’s father did. She charts his progress—and illustrates it with finely descriptive pen-and-wash artwork—of drumming the dots and dashes into his subconscious, memorizing international code words, then taking the test. He becomes the chum of another, local operator, an older boy who takes the younger under his wing and regales him with a story of how he figured in the rescue of a mother and child when a neighboring apartment house took fire. Together they build a station for Barasch’s father, where he lets rip his first code and ultimately stars in his own slice of heroism when he passes along vital information as a hurricane pounds distant Florida. Barasch does an impressive job here. Through her warm, transporting watercolors and her stout text, she manages to turn the world of dots and dashes—hardly the obvious stuff of a compelling narrative—into a tour of a time and an enthusiasm worth taking again and again. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2000
ISBN: 0-374-36166-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
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