Kingsbury, a prolific author of Christian novels for adults, offers a story for younger readers about a courageous knight who competes to become prince of his homeland and heir to the throne. The competition pits four knights from different villages against one another as they face three challenges to test their speed, strength and intelligence. The dark-haired knight from the west village is introduced as a kind, hard-working young man who practices all these skills prior to the competition. His father encourages him along the way with comforting messages about God’s support. During the challenges each of the other knights cheats in some way to gain an unfair advantage, so the king chooses the deserving knight from the west village as the winner of the contest. The story is wildly predictable and not particularly interesting, although the methods of cheating are inventive. The biggest drawback to the text is the lack of individual names for the knights, who are identified only by their village’s direction, which leads to many repetitions of “the knight from the west village.” Grimard’s pleasant illustrations show a medieval world of castles, ornate costumes and flying banners. She depicts the winning knight as a serious young man who smiles only twice in the story, when he is carrying a little disabled boy who can’t walk properly. Earnest, but that's probably not enough to captivate readers. (Picture book/religion. 5-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-310-71645-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Zonderkidz
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
Heartfelt, if florid.
An imagined tale of Francis of Assisi as a boy doing good foreshadows later saintly activities.
His Nonna, his Babbo, his Mamma and the maid are all still asleep, but Francis moves quietly in the dawn. Everyone is tired from staying up the night before, worrying about the she-wolf threatening the town and the livestock. When Francis goes out to tend the animals, he sees the shadow of the wolf. He brings the wolf an egg and some goat’s milk in a bowl, and she departs, leaving child and farm animals in peace, a presaging of the older Francis’ actions in the legend of the Wolf of Gubbio. Nobisso laces her telling with a surfeit of modifiers. The wolf has “intelligent eyes,” a “magnificent head” and “muscular ears nimbly twitching.” Hyde’s oil paintings are beautiful in a soft-focus kind of way, although they reflect a more High Renaissance style than Francis’ late-12th-century boyhood. Full-page images are bordered with leaves, flowers and geometric patterns, and the palette is ash rose, stone and gold. Nobisso’s dedication is in Italian, to her aunts and cousins, and while the few Italian words in the text are fairly clear, it is too bad she does not note that Nonna is Grandma and Babbo is Daddy.
Heartfelt, if florid. (creators’ note, author’s postscript) (Picture book/religion. 5-8)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-940112-20-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Gingerbread House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
As vivid a demonstration of community as readers are likely to find.
Charity and caring for others—the Jewish concept of “tzedakah”—comes full circle in the story of a big sister who demonstrates generosity to a younger sibling through community outreach.
After she learns about tzedakah at the community center, Dalia comes home and creates a tzedakah box to begin saving for the center’s project. She inserts a dollar from her birthday money and tells her curious little brother, Yossi, that the box holds “a big yellow comforter.” With each new donation to the box earned from her gardening chores and lemonade sales, Dalia adds a butterfly bush and a banana cream pie. Yossi’s confusion grows; how can these things fit in what is essentially a piggy bank? Dalia kindly explains how her money, pooled with the other center participants’, will eventually buy all three for a lonely, homebound elderly woman. In joining his sister, Yossi learns that “Tzedakah means… doing the right things. It means thinking of others and giving them what they need.” Dressen-McQueen’s fully developed summer scenes in acrylic and oil pastel provide a vivid complement to the often–page-filling text, their naive, folk quality bringing great quantities of love and warmth to the tale.
As vivid a demonstration of community as readers are likely to find. (author’s note) (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58246-378-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tricycle
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
© 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.
