A treasure house of mysteries large and small.
This Norwegian import is guaranteed to silence boastful Where’s Waldo grads.
It opens on a woodsy nature scene for zero, “No one,” before moving to a deceptively simple one (1) child in a bedroom who next joins his dad (2) for a forest outing. The count continues—by single digits to 30, then by various intervals to 1,000—on to depict crowd scenes in locales ranging from a library to a life drawing class, with many individualized figures (of diverse body type, skin tone, and hair texture and color) recurring. Inconspicuous captions below each picture offer either pointers to subtle visual cues or invitations to speculate about what they see. Of the 20 children in a classroom, for instance, “One of them is thinking about all the people who’ve lived before us. One of them has lost the class teddy bear. One of them is dreading football training. One of them will become prime minister.” Roskifte supplies some solutions, along with additional scenarios, at the close. She also gives viewers a bit of an assist by coloring in her small, doll-like humans throughout but leaving everything else as pale outlines. Switching at the end to a big blue marble floating in space, she rounds off the numbering with 7.5 billion followed by a barrage of leading questions, from what became of that lost teddy to lifelong posers, including the poignant “Does everyone share the same truth?”
A treasure house of mysteries large and small. (Picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7112-4524-2
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent.
Wouldn’t the same housecat look very different to a dog and a mouse, a bee and a flea, a fox, a goldfish, or a skunk?
The differences are certainly vast in Wenzel’s often melodramatic scenes. Benign and strokable beneath the hand of a light-skinned child (visible only from the waist down), the brindled cat is transformed to an ugly, skinny slinker in a suspicious dog’s view. In a fox’s eyes it looks like delectably chubby prey but looms, a terrifying monster, over a cowering mouse. It seems a field of colored dots to a bee; jagged vibrations to an earthworm; a hairy thicket to a flea. “Yes,” runs the terse commentary’s refrain, “they all saw the cat.” Words in italics and in capital letters in nearly every line give said commentary a deliberate cadence and pacing: “The cat walked through the world, / with its whiskers, ears, and paws… // and the fish saw A CAT.” Along with inviting more reflective viewers to ruminate about perception and subjectivity, the cat’s perambulations offer elemental visual delights in the art’s extreme and sudden shifts in color, texture, and mood from one page or page turn to the next.
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4521-5013-0
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
This luck-of-the-Irish alphabet book cites Irish legends and symbols with intertwined one-stanza poems. Each one-page entry features tidbits of Irish culture and lore. “B is for the Blarney Stone / And for great Brian Boru. / Beware the piercing banshee’s cry is / Or else she’ll come for you”; “Q is for the Irish pirate queen; / Grace O’Malley was her name. / She captured many English ships, / And their treasures she did claim.” (Inexplicably, pirate queen Grace O'Malley is pictured on dry land next to a castle and holding a broadsword; there's not a hint of a seafarer about the picture.) Some letters are stretches, as with most alphabet books: T is for the three colors on the Irish flag; U is for uilleann pipes; Gaelic has no letter X, except in names of Irish towns like Foxrock. And one has to wonder how many children in the book's audience will care about "J is for James Joyce." The format is typical, with color illustrations staging each ornately embellished capital letter and a few double-page spreads. One page of back matter provides a two-word glossary, a list of the 32 Irish counties and the lyrics to the song "Molly Malone." The device works tolerably but more contextualization and greater sensitivity to the audience level would have made the book more useful. (Picture book. 7-10)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58980-745-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Pelican
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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