A deeply felt if sketchy companion for Eve Bunting’s The Wall, illustrated by Ronald Himler (1990), or the plethora of...
A tribute to the massive annual motorcycle rally in Washington, D.C., that honors our country’s veterans.
Fittingly for an event that is all about remembering, Ruth’s illustrations depict hazy, often translucent figures riding through misty golden light past the towering statue of Abraham Lincoln to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. A white child narrates in terse rhyme: “Grandpa rides for Joe and Tom, / friends he lost in Vietnam.” Traveling to rendezvous with Grandpa by train, the narrator adds, “our trip is for Uncle Zach, / flying airplanes far away. / His picture rides with me today.” Dressed in camo and riding in the grizzled grandfather’s sidecar, the child reaches the wall, where they “Leave a single flower. Kneel. / Names in charcoal. Cry. And heal.” Then at day’s end it’s time to ride again, with “Whispered wishes. Come home soon.” Only a quick mention of “POWs, MIAs” acknowledges that they are the event’s chief focus (or at least the focus of its organizers). More troublingly, in the art almost all of the visible faces, both of riders and in the background crowds, are white.
A deeply felt if sketchy companion for Eve Bunting’s The Wall, illustrated by Ronald Himler (1990), or the plethora of introductions to the Memorial Day holiday. (afterword) (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-47012-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The first broad release of a title originally published regionally and overseas in 1999, this simply told, deeply affecting tale follows a teddy’s passage from hand to hand through war and other troubles. First given to David, a German child who passes it to his close friend Oskar when he and his Jewish family are taken away, the bear is picked from a pile of bomb rubble by an African-American GI. In the States it becomes a girl’s prized companion until snatched by neighborhood ruffians and cast into the trash. Rescued, it then spends many years in the window of an antiques store until a passerby—none other than a now-elderly Oskar—recognizes a distinctive ink stain on its head and rushes in to buy it. This sparks a newspaper story, which leads to a stunning phone call and the joyful reunion of bear, Oskar and David. Subtle changes of facial expression in Ungerer’s watercolor art give the bear—stained, battered and with a clumsily repaired bullet hole—plenty of character, and there’s nary a trace of sentimentality in the matter-of-fact narrative. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 0714857661
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Phaidon
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
Readers will (probably) agree that even the most irritating siblings don’t deserve to be cooked and eaten. As a rule.
Rules are meant to be followed, but when monsters threaten to eat your sister, a little transgression might be in order.
The old mountain cabin where self-righteous Ian and his savage pincher of a big sister, Jenny, come for a stay has four posted rules: don’t track mud on the bearskin rug; don’t leave hair in the tub drain; replace any wood burned in the stove; and especially, don’t open a certain red door. No problem for Ian, a rule follower to the nth degree…but Jenny is a poster child for mutinous, ill-tempered preadolescence, and in no time she’s broken all four. That night she’s snatched out of bed by a toothy bear, a frowning tub, and a cast iron stove with jack-o’-lantern eyes to be boiled up into “rulebreaker soup.” Just deserts, you say? So thinks Ian, at first. But he stops in his headlong flight to reflect that even if there isn’t a rule about always saving one’s sister from monsters, maybe there should be. Ian returns to compromise his principles with a little fib about a bigger monster that sends the three animated furnishings hustling back through the red door. Along with comically exaggerating the contrast between the red-haired, annoyingly tidy lad and his scowling sib, Myers pitches the two white kids against a trio of deliciously menacing boojums in atmospherically moonlit rustic settings. Jenny isn’t exactly reformed afterward, but at least her pinches aren’t as painful.
Readers will (probably) agree that even the most irritating siblings don’t deserve to be cooked and eaten. As a rule. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4231-8516-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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