Pedantic and, contrary to its goal, exoticizing.
A girl who uses a wheelchair goes about her everyday life.
“This is Carolyn. Like many kids her age, Carolyn loves animals, castles, and building with blocks,” opens the text, revealing its aim of conveying to readers who do not use wheelchairs that a wheelchair-using girl is just like them. Carolyn “joins right in during reading time”—but why wouldn’t she? Discussions of ordinary pleasures, such as sitting next to a friend at lunch, and everyday adaptations—a school bus with an elevator “made just for wheelchairs!” (not for people using wheelchairs?)—end with exclamation marks. This forced positivity also applies to Carolyn’s mood. “Yes I can!” she repeats over and over (not in defense but supposedly out of pure enthusiasm), which makes her sound more like a political slogan than a kid. There’s lip service paid to disappointment and frustration, but everything springs back to that can-do spirit. Lemay’s children have big heads, tiny, skinny limbs, and good cheer. Carolyn is white or light-skinned, with straight, light-brown hair; her class is multiracial. The prose is mind-numbingly dull (“She is helpful to her mom and dad and even to her baby brother”); even a drop of characterization would serve readers better than this message to kids with and without wheelchairs that wheelchair users should keep everyone’s chins up, including their own. Backmatter directed to adults is awkward and, bizarrely, adds new information about Carolyn as if she were real.
Pedantic and, contrary to its goal, exoticizing. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4338-2869-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Magination/American Psychological Association
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
A straightforward tale of conflict and reconciliation for newly emergent readers? Not exactly, which raises it above the...
In this deceptively spare, very beginning reader, a girl assembles a robot and then treats it like a slave until it goes on strike.
Having put the robot together from a jumble of loose parts, the budding engineer issues an increasingly peremptory series of rhymed orders— “Throw, Bot. / Row, Bot”—that turn from playful activities like chasing bubbles in the yard to tasks like hoeing the garden, mowing the lawn and towing her around in a wagon. Jung crafts a robot with riveted edges, big googly eyes and a smile that turns down in stages to a scowl as the work is piled on. At last, the exhausted robot plops itself down, then in response to its tormentor’s angry “Don’t say no, Bot!” stomps off in a huff. In one to four spacious, sequential panels per spread, Jung develops both the plotline and the emotional conflict using smoothly modeled cartoon figures against monochromatic or minimally detailed backgrounds. The child’s commands, confined in small dialogue balloons, are rhymed until her repentant “Come on home, Bot” breaks the pattern but leads to a more equitable division of labor at the end.
A straightforward tale of conflict and reconciliation for newly emergent readers? Not exactly, which raises it above the rest. (Easy reader. 4-6)Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-87083-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
An unfortunately simplistic delivery of a well-intentioned message.
Drawing on lyrics from her Mormon children’s hymn of the same title, Pearson explores diversity and acceptance in a more secular context.
Addressing people of varying ages, races, origins, and abilities in forced rhymes that omit the original version’s references to Jesus, various speakers describe how they—unlike “some people”—will “show [their] love for” their fellow humans. “If you don’t talk as most people do / some people talk and laugh at you,” a child tells a tongue-tied classmate. “But I won’t! / I won’t! / I’ll talk with you / and giggle too. / That’s how I’ll show my love for you.” Unfortunately, many speakers’ actions feel vague and rather patronizing even as they aim to include and reassure. “I know you bring such interesting things,” a wheelchair user says, welcoming a family “born far, far away” who arrives at the airport; the adults wear Islamic clothing. As pink- and brown-skinned worshipers join a solitary brown-skinned person who somehow “[doesn’t] pray as some people pray” on a church pew, a smiling, pink-skinned worshiper’s declaration that “we’re all, I see, one family” raises echoes of the problematic assertion, “I don’t see color.” The speakers’ exclamations of “But I won’t!” after noting others’ prejudiced behavior reads more as self-congratulation than promise of inclusion. Sanders’ geometric, doll-like human figures are cheery but stiff, and the text’s bold, uppercase typeface switches jarringly to cursive for the refrain, “That’s how I’ll show my love for you.” Characters’ complexions include paper-white, yellow, pink, and brown.
An unfortunately simplistic delivery of a well-intentioned message. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4236-5395-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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