Empowering.
Girls harness their anger to make positive change.
Midway through the 1962 classic A Wrinkle in Time, the late L’Engle writes: “‘Stay angry, little Meg,’ Mrs Whatsit whispered. ‘You will need all your anger now.’” Chan uses this quote as a rallying cry to inspire readers, dedicating this book “to all the Meg Murrys.” The opening spread features a group of girls diverse in terms of race and ability listening to a librarian read from L’Engle’s novel while a sign propped up on a nearby bookshelf states, “Books unite us, censorship divides us.” While the text is more exhortation than narrative, the digital illustrations suggest a wordless story that begins with two girls looking askance at a field filled with tree stumps enclosed by a fence bearing a sign that reads, “Park closed, mall coming soon!” and ends with an image of a newly created park and an inclusive community garden, a result of the girls using their anger for good. Along the way, the bold, cheerful illustrations depict girls researching deforestation at the library, marching in support of LGBTQ+ rights, staying curious (a girl using a wheelchair studies renewable energy), welcoming others (a girl in a hijab eating alone is invited to join other girls at lunch), singing, and playing. Chan reclaims the famous L’Engle quote—which was excised from the movie adaptation—and gives girls a full-throated endorsement to be true to themselves.
Empowering. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780374390839
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As insubstantial as hot air.
A diverse cast of children first makes a fleet of hot air balloons and then takes to the sky in them.
Lifestyle maven Gaines uses this activity as a platform to celebrate diversity in learning and working styles. Some people like to work together; others prefer a solo process. Some take pains to plan extensively; others know exactly what they want and jump right in. Some apply science; others demonstrate artistic prowess. But “see how beautiful it can be when / our differences share the same sky?” Double-page spreads leading up to this moment of liftoff are laid out such that rhyming abcb quatrains typically contain one or two opposing concepts: “Some of us are teachers / and share what we know. / But all of us are learners. / Together is how we grow!” In the accompanying illustration, a bespectacled, Asian-presenting child at a blackboard lectures the other children on “balloon safety.” Gaines’ text has the ring of sincerity, but the sentiment is hardly an original one, and her verse frequently sacrifices scansion for rhyme. Sometimes it abandons both: “We may not look / or work or think the same, / but we all have an / important part to play.” Swaney’s delicate, pastel-hued illustrations do little to expand on the text, but they are pretty. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11.2-by-18.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 70.7% of actual size.)
As insubstantial as hot air. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4003-1423-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tommy Nelson
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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