Little ones will want to pore over the pages again and again as they read and sing along with the Judy Collins recording...
The venerable and well-loved song from Disney’s Pinocchio is lovingly re-imagined.
The song has been recorded by dozens of singers in every possible style. Harline’s lyrics are uplifting and hope-filled and have remained in collective memory for 70 years. Each generation of children exposed to reissues of the movie finds it new and fresh. In this version, Puybaret’s visual interpretation wistfully evokes a peaceful and magical world. A star-filled midnight-blue sky glows from the endpapers through the double-page spreads as a unifying motif. The wishing star appears first as a distant, diaphanous, almost ghostlike figure that morphs into a stylized fairy with delicate wings, dressed in blues and yellows. As she floats and flies about, she gathers a parade of multiethnic, multinational children through a brightly colored dreamscape. Then, returning to her place in the sky, she shines benevolently as the children fly about, with and without visible wings. The children’s wishes appear at first to be mostly about candy and toys, but they interact and come together with gestures of peace and acceptance. The children’s clothing, rendered in sharp, bright colors, reflect their various ethnicities but stop just short of stereotype.
Little ones will want to pore over the pages again and again as they read and sing along with the Judy Collins recording that is included. A gem. (illustrator's and performer’s notes) (Picture book. 2-6)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-936140-35-0
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Imagine Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
A lively celebration of music and expressive dance.
The beat is all around her when a girl takes a walk in the park with her mother.
On a lovely summer day, a young African-American girl in a bright pink sundress and matching sneakers sees, smells, sings, claps and snaps her fingers to an internal rhythm. As a boom box plays its song and a drummer taps his beat, neighborhood children join her in an energetic, pulsating dance culminating in a rousing musical parade. Schofield-Morrison’s brief text has a shout-it-out element as each spread resounds with a two-word phrase: “I shook a rhythm with my hips. /SHAKE SHAKE”; “I tapped the rhythm with my toes. / TIP TAP.” Morrison’s full-bleed, textured oil paintings capture the joy of a mother and daughter in an urban park surrounded by musicians, food vendors and many exuberant children. Read this aloud with music playing loudly—not in the background. Morrison is a Coretta Scott King/New Talent Award winner, and this is a fine debut for his wife in their first collaboration.
A lively celebration of music and expressive dance. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: June 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61963-178-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s a bit hard to dance, or count, to this beat.
Dinos that love to move and groove get children counting from one to 10—and perhaps moving to the beat.
Beginning with a solo bop by a female dino (she has eyelashes, doncha know), the dinosaur dance party begins. Each turn of the page adds another dino and a change in the dance genre: waltz, country line dancing, disco, limbo, square dancing, hip-hop, and swing. As the party would be incomplete without the moonwalk, the T. Rex does the honors…and once they are beyond their initial panic at his appearance, the onlookers cheer wildly. The repeated refrain on each spread allows for audience participation, though it doesn’t easily trip off the tongue: “They hear a swish. / What’s this? / One more? / One more dino on the floor.” Some of the prehistoric beasts are easily identifiable—pterodactyl, ankylosaurus, triceratops—but others will be known only to the dino-obsessed; none are identified, other than T-Rex. Packed spreads filled with psychedelically colored dinos sporting blocks of color, stripes, or polka dots (and infectious looks of joy) make identification even more difficult, to say nothing of counting them. Indeed, this fails as a counting primer: there are extra animals (and sometimes a grumpy T-Rex) in the backgrounds, and the next dino to join the party pokes its head into the frame on the page before. Besides all that, most kids won’t get the dance references.
It’s a bit hard to dance, or count, to this beat. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8075-1598-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
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