A simple kids’ tale that blends gentle storytelling with real-life horse facts.
Two young horses play, nap, learn, and grow in Blessington’s debut picture book.
This book reaches out to its young readers in the first-person voices of two juvenile Clydesdales: a colt named Danny and a filly named Emily, born a year apart. It’s designed to look like a journal—the text appears to be hand-drawn on lined notebook paper—and each entry is illustrated with Garman’s photographs of the real-life Danny and Emily, who served as the book’s inspiration. The two horses live with or near other animals, including a cow, sheep, ponies, Sparky the dog, and Harry the hawk, on an idyllic-appearing farm in the Scottish Highlands (owned by the author and photographer in real life). After the equine brother and sister travel there by truck, they settle into their new home and share their simple, day-to-day adventures with a recurring theme: “Because we are kids too, we are curious”; “Because we are kids too, we lose our baby teeth,” and so on. The horses explore, overcome their fears, get into mischief, splash in mud puddles, play hide-and-seek, learn new skills, and make friends, just like human children do, albeit sometimes in rather different ways. For example, horse mischief includes “wee Emily” munching forbidden flowers, and when the two attend an outdoor classroom, their lessons include how to respond to reins. This book isn’t just for horse-lovers, though; it features a clear, pleasant narrative, matched in tone by its photographs, and it effectively invites young readers to relate to and empathize with “kids” of another species. To that end, the author uses creative license with some examples of kidlike behavior, such as Danny’s selfie close-up shot. She also offers humorous explanations for why Emily digs in the snow, and why Danny noses the ground as a rainbow arcs overhead. (Both involve some big brother/little sister teasing.) However, there is one error in word usage: the word “lay” in “We had to lay down for a nap.”
A simple kids’ tale that blends gentle storytelling with real-life horse facts.Pub Date: April 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-8891-7
Page Count: 36
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift.
A paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere.
This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. Makes sense: aren’t parents and other close family members children’s first teachers? This duality suggests that the book might be best shared one-on-one between a nostalgic adult and a child who’s developed some self-confidence, having learned a thing or two from a parent, grandparent, older relative, or classroom instructor.
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943200-08-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Compendium
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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