A practical guide to easy drawing exercises using a flexible shortcut that can be adapted ad infinitum.
Robbins’ drawing primer for children suggests “putting your best foot forward.”
The highlights of this collection of 55 step-by-step drawing exercises—each using the outline of a child’s shoe—are the featured illustrations on each page showing images that real children have drawn, with all their idiosyncratic personalities and verve. Tommy, age 9, has made his foot into a jubilant shark, and Trevor, age 12, has crafted a remarkable, sedate red frog with black spots. Also inspiring are the images of child artists at work at the book’s close; this set of exercises has really been put into practice. For anyone not inclined to use a potentially dirty actual shoe, a standard, simple shoe-print shape is provided as a traceable outline at the start of the book. Suggested art projects, illustrated economically by Marts, are arranged in order of easiest to most difficult; instructions for follow-up transformations of one’s art into stick puppets, magnets, and greeting cards are included at the end of the book. Children’s caregivers in a variety of settings—particularly those asked to think of craft ideas on short notice—will find useful challenges, tie-in projects, and easy group activities. Robbins, who played Miss Karen on television’s Romper Room and is the author of I Think I Can (2019) and America’s Flag Story (2020), has taught this method of drawing for over 20 years. Based on this experience, she asserts in a concise note for educators and parents that drawing “increases hand/eye coordination” and also, along with other benefits, “provides a relaxing, pleasurable activity.” The enthusiasm evinced for giving young artists an unthreatening scaffold they can use to practice and elaborate endlessly upon (and therefore actually enjoy) is infectious.
A practical guide to easy drawing exercises using a flexible shortcut that can be adapted ad infinitum.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780971144125
Page Count: 70
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A solid addition to Rotner’s seasonal series. Bring on summer.
Rotner follows up her celebrations of spring and autumn with this look at all things winter.
Beginning with the signs that winter is coming—bare trees, shorter days, colder temperatures—Rotner eases readers into the season. People light fires and sing songs on the solstice, trees and plants stop growing, and shadows grow long. Ice starts to form on bodies of water and windows. When the snow flies, the fun begins—bundle up and then build forts, make snowballs and snowmen (with eyebrows!), sled, ski (nordic is pictured), skate, snowshoe, snowboard, drink hot chocolate. Animals adapt to the cold as well. “Birds grow more feathers” (there’s nothing about fluffing and air insulation) and mammals, more hair. They have to search for food, and Rotner discusses how many make or find shelter, slow down, hibernate, or go underground or underwater to stay warm. One page talks about celebrating holidays with lights and decorations. The photos show a lit menorah, an outdoor deciduous tree covered in huge Christmas bulbs, a girl next to a Chinese dragon head, a boy with lit luminarias, and some fireworks. The final spread shows signs of the season’s shift to spring. Rotner’s photos, as always, are a big draw. The children are a marvelous mix of cultures and races, and all show their clear delight with winter.
A solid addition to Rotner’s seasonal series. Bring on summer. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3976-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Energetic enough to carry younger rocketeers off the launch pad if not into a very high orbit.
The bubble-helmeted feline explains what rockets do and the role they have played in sending people (and animals) into space.
Addressing a somewhat younger audience than in previous outings (Professor Astro Cat’s Frontiers of Space, 2013, etc.), Astro Cat dispenses with all but a light shower of “factoroids” to describe how rockets work. A highly selective “History of Space Travel” follows—beginning with a crew of fruit flies sent aloft in 1947, later the dog Laika (her dismal fate left unmentioned), and the human Yuri Gagarin. Then it’s on to Apollo 11 in 1969; the space shuttles Discovery, Columbia, and Challenger (the fates of the latter two likewise elided); the promise of NASA’s next-gen Orion and the Space Launch System; and finally vague closing references to other rockets in the works for local tourism and, eventually, interstellar travel. In the illustrations the spacesuited professor, joined by a mouse and cat in similar dress, do little except float in space and point at things. Still, the art has a stylish retro look, and portraits of Sally Ride and Guion Bluford diversify an otherwise all-white, all-male astronaut corps posing heroically or riding blocky, geometric spacecraft across starry reaches.
Energetic enough to carry younger rocketeers off the launch pad if not into a very high orbit. (glossary) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-911171-55-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Flying Eye Books
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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