There’s lots of eye candy in individual scenes, but the storyline is sketchy at best, making the whole rather less than the...
Curiosity about the flowers and animals, cars and buildings far below prompts the lonely Cloud Princess to descend for a closer look.
Leading off with a lenticular cover that adds 3-D layers to the princess’s luxuriant flows of white curls, the illustrations outshine the cursory plotline. Depicted as a pink-cheeked human child with huge, dark, almost mangalike eyes and a sad rosebud mouth, the fascinated princess floats downward accompanied by a flock of magenta birds to examine leaves and butterflies and to touch a flower with delicate fingers. But her hair suddenly begins to melt into rain. Miss Sun’s warning sends her scurrying skyward again…but doesn’t stop her from continuing to come down regularly, bringing with her the spring rains. Le endows Miss Sun, Miss Moon, and even the teal stars with faces, and she intersperses views of the bare-armed princess with scenes of earthly schoolchildren drawn with shorter, darker hair but similar features. The art is subject to abrupt transitions from one side of the gutter to the other, but all the sweet expressions and softly variegated colors throughout create delicate visual harmonies.
There’s lots of eye candy in individual scenes, but the storyline is sketchy at best, making the whole rather less than the sum of its parts. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 14, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-60887-731-7
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Insight Editions
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
A retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy.
Robo-parents Diode and Lugnut present daughter Cathode with a new little brother—who requires, unfortunately, some assembly.
Arriving in pieces from some mechanistic version of Ikea, little Flange turns out to be a cute but complicated tyke who immediately falls apart…and then rockets uncontrollably about the room after an overconfident uncle tinkers with his basic design. As a squad of helpline techies and bevies of neighbors bearing sludge cake and like treats roll in, the cluttered and increasingly crowded scene deteriorates into madcap chaos—until at last Cath, with help from Roomba-like robodog Sprocket, stages an intervention by whisking the hapless new arrival off to a backyard workshop for a proper assembly and software update. “You’re such a good big sister!” warbles her frazzled mom. Wiesner’s robots display his characteristic clean lines and even hues but endearingly look like vaguely anthropomorphic piles of random jet-engine parts and old vacuum cleaners loosely connected by joints of armored cable. They roll hither and thither through neatly squared-off panels and pages in infectiously comical dismay. Even the end’s domestic tranquility lasts only until Cathode spots the little box buried in the bigger one’s packing material: “TWINS!” (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at 52% of actual size.)
A retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-544-98731-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
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