A warm, heartfelt paean to a leafy refuge for beautiful birds and happy children.
In Pearl’s picture book, a beloved tree and a centuries-old castle share a storied pastoral history.
A majestic tree stands in a field miles away from the bustling city of London, England. Local children climb its branches, sit high among its leaves, and rest beneath its shaded canopy. As darkness approaches, colorful peahens and peacocks perch upon its limbs for shelter while the children and their families fall sleep in their homes. It is during this quiet time that the tree shares memories of times past with the castle (Woodcroft Castle, a real-life edifice that dates back to the 13th century) upon whose grounds it was planted. They recount how the castle came to be and reminisce about simpler times. (“Together, they remember when there were no trains or cars or planes. When there was only sun and night and wrong and right.”) As day breaks, the children rush to feed the peacocks and peahens and return to their favorite tree. Pearl’s soft pastel illustrations, which have a grainy texture, suit the story’s pastoral setting, and pages incorporating black-and-white shadow play effectively represent the historic battles waged at Woodcroft Castle. The text is written in brief poetic stanzas. Alluding to Woodcroft’s fractious history, the author sets the stage for the message she hopes to impart to her readers: Care should be taken with humans, animals, trees…and all living things.
A warm, heartfelt paean to a leafy refuge for beautiful birds and happy children.Pub Date: June 27, 2024
ISBN: 9781838757663
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Nightingale Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions.
Ellis, known for her illustrations for Colin Meloy’s Wildwood series, here riffs on the concept of “home.”
Shifting among homes mundane and speculative, contemporary and not, Ellis begins and ends with views of her own home and a peek into her studio. She highlights palaces and mansions, but she also takes readers to animal homes and a certain famously folkloric shoe (whose iconic Old Woman manages a passel of multiethnic kids absorbed in daring games). One spread showcases “some folks” who “live on the road”; a band unloads its tour bus in front of a theater marquee. Ellis’ compelling ink and gouache paintings, in a palette of blue-grays, sepia and brick red, depict scenes ranging from mythical, underwater Atlantis to a distant moonscape. Another spread, depicting a garden and large building under connected, transparent domes, invites readers to wonder: “Who in the world lives here? / And why?” (Earth is seen as a distant blue marble.) Some of Ellis’ chosen depictions, oddly juxtaposed and stripped of any historical or cultural context due to the stylized design and spare text, become stereotypical. “Some homes are boats. / Some homes are wigwams.” A sailing ship’s crew seems poised to land near a trio of men clad in breechcloths—otherwise unidentified and unremarked upon.
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6529-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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