Perfect for a snuggly read, a Valentine’s Day storytime, or a gift between special friends of any age.
A humorous explanation of what love is and isn’t.
Though the text is straightforward, the spare cartoon illustrations are loaded with fun details. Spreads feature the words I love you followed by three rhyming phrases. The first illustration of each verse offers a humorous contradiction: “I love you like a cuddle loves”—a cactus? (The accompanying image depicts a brown-skinned child looking nervously at the cactus.) Of course not. But the next illustrations and words show more likely comparisons. “I love you like a cuddle loves / a bunny.” Even the youngest listeners will get the joke that a bear loves honey and not broccoli or that a cat prefers sleeping in the sun to walking under cloudy skies, although many young readers will not embrace I love you “like a heart loves / romance.” Strategic page turns add suspense or giggles and create opportunities for children to supply their own answers, perhaps even in rhyme, and the text’s simple format can easily be extended for more wordplay using daily events. Fun word choices will introduce kids to potentially new vocabulary. “I love you like a pirate loves / an X, // like a witch loves / a hex, // and like a muscle loves / to flex.” Because the book ends with the clear message of “I LOVE YOU!” readers should be prepared to close the book and share a loving hug or two. Characters throughout are diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Perfect for a snuggly read, a Valentine’s Day storytime, or a gift between special friends of any age. (Picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-79721-007-0
Page Count: 60
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Clever verse coupled with bold primary-colored images is sure to attract and hone the attention of fun-seeking children...
A fizzy yet revealing romp through the toy world.
Though of standard picture-book size, Stein and illustrator Staake’s latest collaboration (Bugs Galore, 2012, etc.) presents a sweeping compendium of diversions for the young. From fairies and gnomes, race cars and jacks, tin cans and socks, to pots ’n’ pans and a cardboard box, Stein combs the toy kingdom for equally thrilling sources of fun. These light, tightly rhymed quatrains focus nicely on the functions characterizing various objects, such as “Floaty, bubbly, / while-you-wash toys” or “Sharing-secrets- / with-tin-cans toys,” rather than flatly stating their names. Such ambiguity at once offers Staake free artistic rein to depict copious items capable of performing those tasks and provides pre-readers ample freedom to draw from the experiences of their own toy chests as they scan Staake’s vibrant spreads brimming with chunky, digitally rendered objects and children at play. The sense of community and sharing suggested by most of the spreads contributes well to Stein’s ultimate theme, which he frames by asking: “But which toy is / the best toy ever? / The one most fun? / Most cool and clever?” Faced with three concluding pages filled with all sorts of indoor and outside toys to choose from, youngsters may be shocked to learn, on turning to the final spread, that the greatest one of all—“a toy SENSATION!”—proves to be “[y]our very own / imagination.”
Clever verse coupled with bold primary-colored images is sure to attract and hone the attention of fun-seeking children everywhere. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6254-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
This extraordinary book will make it hard for any child reader to settle for the mundaneness of reality.
A testament to the power of an imaginative mind.
A compulsively creative, unnamed, brown-skinned little girl with purple hair wonders what she would do if the pencil she uses “to create…stories that come from my heart” disappeared. Turns out, it wouldn’t matter. Art can take many forms. She can fold paper (origami), carve wood, tear wallpaper to create texture designs, and draw in the dirt. She can even craft art with light and darkness or singing and dancing. At the story’s climax, her unencumbered imagination explodes beyond the page into a foldout spread, enabling readers both literally and figuratively to see into her fantasy life. While readers will find much to love in the exuberant rhyming verse, attending closely to the illustrations brings its own rewards given the fascinating combinations of mixed media Curato employs. For instance, an impressively colorful dragon is made up of different leaves that have been photographed in every color phase from green to deep red, including the dragon’s breath (made from the brilliant orange leaves of a Japanese maple) and its nose and scales (created by the fan-shaped, butter-colored leaves of a gingko). Sugar cubes, flower petals, sand, paper bags, marbles, sequins, and lots more add to and compose these brilliant, fantasy-sparking illustrations.
This extraordinary book will make it hard for any child reader to settle for the mundaneness of reality. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39096-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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