A highly readable work of juvenile fiction about a spirited young girl’s ups and downs.
Rose’s debut children’s novel delivers a valuable narrative about a fifth-grader facing bullying, learning disabilities and a ghostly mystery.
After 10-year-old Jamie Ireland’s best friend moves away, a bully targets her on the bus, and her teacher humiliates her in class over her messy handwriting. Writing makes her hand cramp, and she has trouble spelling because her brain scrambles certain words and letters. Jamie’s loving parents are busy with work, and she’s sure that they expect her to be as perfect as her older sister. One night, Jamie has an odd dream about a woman offering her a book with a heart-shaped grease stain on its cover—“[a]nd that’s when Jamie’s dream hopped like a rabbit from her asleep-brain into her wide-awake-brain.” She rummages in her attic and makes a discovery that connects her with her grandmother, who died before she was born: a cookbook with a heart-shaped grease stain and a special recipe for apple pie. Jamie delves into the science of cooking and adds baking to her other interests, which include running races at recess and reading. But when the bullying continues, Jamie’s learning problems worsen. So does her frustration, culminating in a suspension from school and a counselor’s request that she keep a daily inspiration diary. The pages of this diary also feature well-chosen quotations from wide-ranging sources (such as “Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand,” by philosopher Baruch Spinoza). The line drawings and graphic design elements by illustrator Tito add visual interest as Rose deftly tells the story of Jamie’s emergence from her shell and her diagnosis of dyslexic dysgraphia. The author’s prose is never preachy or saccharine, and it nicely builds suspense where appropriate. A junior baking contest ends the book on a satisfying note.
A highly readable work of juvenile fiction about a spirited young girl’s ups and downs.Pub Date: March 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4848-0070-6
Page Count: 184
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A joyful celebration.
Families in a variety of configurations play, dance, and celebrate together.
The rhymed verse, based on a song from the Noodle Loaf children’s podcast, declares that “Families belong / Together like a puzzle / Different-sized people / One big snuggle.” The accompanying image shows an interracial couple of caregivers (one with brown skin and one pale) cuddling with a pajama-clad toddler with light brown skin and surrounded by two cats and a dog. Subsequent pages show a wide array of families with members of many different racial presentations engaging in bike and bus rides, indoor dance parties, and more. In some, readers see only one caregiver: a father or a grandparent, perhaps. One same-sex couple with two children in tow are expecting another child. Smart’s illustrations are playful and expressive, curating the most joyful moments of family life. The verse, punctuated by the word together, frequently set in oversized font, is gently inclusive at its best but may trip up readers with its irregular rhythms. The song that inspired the book can be found on the Noodle Loaf website.
A joyful celebration. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-22276-8
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Rise x Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
Continuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long (The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. After the big new yellow tractor, crowds of overalls-clad locals and a red fire engine all fail to pull her out, the little tractor (who had been left behind the barn to rust after the arrival of the new tractor) comes putt-puff-puttedy-chuff-ing down the hill to entice his terrified bovine buddy successfully back to dry ground. Short on internal logic but long on creamy scenes of calf and tractor either gamboling energetically with a gaggle of McCloskey-like geese through neutral-toned fields or resting peacefully in the shade of a gnarled tree (apple, not cork), the episode will certainly draw nostalgic adults. Considering the author’s track record and influences, it may find a welcome from younger audiences too. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-25248-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
SEEN & HEARD
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