It’s a hot day—it’s also a “best-friend-breakup day.” As Miss Johnson works her crossword puzzle and dozes, as Mr. Paul weeds his flower bed, Kishi and Renée remain resolutely apart: it appears that Kishi bought the very last blue ice pop, even though she knows that’s Renée’s favorite. It’s a “never-speak-to-her-again-even-if-she-was-the-last-person-on-earth day.” But then the siren song of jump-rope chanting calls and the girls are reunited in double-dutch—finding final resolution in one last, shared blue ice pop. English has childhood spats down pat, the apocalyptic sundering of a friendship miraculously healed by play. Steptoe’s textured collage illustrations feature tissue-paper clothing over paper skin, all set against a background of rough wooden boards. He renders facial features in a highly naturalistic manner, with outsized lips and flat noses; it’s an effect that may initially be off-putting for readers accustomed to smooth prettiness, but the total effect is both original and emotionally effective (particularly when the girls are squinty-mad, the ugliness of their emotions showing up clearly on their faces). The final scenes, of play and ice pops, are full of movement and energy and joy. “So good!” (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 24, 2004
ISBN: 0-395-98527-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
Cuter as a child-narrated video, but the message is worthy enough to justify this less-evanescent medium.
How and why a symbol of exclusion can be transformed into just the opposite.
The circle is depicted literally in the illustrations but regarded as metaphorical in the unpolished if earnest rhyme. It begins as a mark “on the ground [drawn] along each shoe” (and then, according to the picture, around toes and heels) as “a safe little place for just one person.” But that makes no more sense that a library with “just one book”—and so it should be expanded to include family, friends, and ultimately the whole world: “In the circles all around us / everywhere that we all go / there’s a difference we can make / and a love we can all show.” Expanding on the Instagram video from which this is spun, the simply drawn art shows one button-eyed, pale-skinned child with a piece of chalk drawing and redrawing an increasingly large circle that first lets in a sibling and their interracial parents, then relatives (including another interracial couple), then larger groups (diverse in age and skin tone, including one child in a wheelchair and one wearing a hijab). In subsequent views figures mix and match in various combinations with interlocking circles of their own while waving personal flags here (“I only like SPORTS!”; “I’m Team CAKE!”) and sharing doughnuts there until a closing invitation to regard “wonder-eyed” our beaming, encircled planet. (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-18-inch double-page spreads viewed at 75% of actual size.)
Cuter as a child-narrated video, but the message is worthy enough to justify this less-evanescent medium. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-32318-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Award-winning author Bunting's (Night of the Gargoyles, p. 1122, etc.; The In-Between Days) persuasive moral tale about a young Mexican boy in contemporary California who lies in order to help his family. Francisco accompanies his grandfather to get work as a day laborer because grandfather, or "Abuelo," doesn't speak English. When a man comes along asking for a gardener, Francisco eagerly tells him that Abuelo is an excellent gardener. But as it turns out, neither Abuelo nor Francisco knows much about plants, and instead of pulling out the weeds, they pull out all the healthy new plants instead. The man who hired them is angry, and Abuelo is confused, until he learns the extent of his grandson's involvement in the mistake. Francisco is ashamed of what he has done and admires Abuelo's dignity under the circumstances: Abuelo insists on doing the job right and will not accept the man's offer of payment until it has been done. Himler's gentle watercolor illustrations capture the hot, dry landscape and the cowed, yet hopeful, postures of immigrants seeking to make their way in a new land. A fine, moving story that manages to convey an important moral message without sounding preachy or didactic. (Fiction/Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 19, 1994
ISBN: 0-395-67321-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
