A book that acts as a visual yardstick for preschool children to gauge just how much they've grown and learned since they were babies. It begins with a full-color group photo of six winsome preschoolers juxtaposed against their individual baby photos. A series of vignettes follows, each one focusing on the dependent infant the child was and his or her contrasting accomplishments now. Readers see each of them revel in the realization that ``Now I'm big!'' There is an element of mystery to the story: matching the initial baby photos to the grown children in the group shot. Miller (My Five Senses, 1994, etc.) offers a simple concept, carefully executed, that will reinforce all children's sense of mastery of basic tasks. (Picture book. 3+)
Pub Date: March 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-688-14077-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
An extraordinary expression of Filipino culture and intergenerational familial bonds.
A child describes the smells, tastes, and feelings of their summer.
“How do I know summer is here?” For the child sharing their story, summer is the smell of stone fruit ripening and days with nothing to do. Summer really begins when their lola comes to visit and makes her special mango jam. Together, grandmother and grandchild play at the pool, go to the beach, and watch fireworks. Lola fills their days with the delicious smells and tastes of traditional Filipino food, like cassava cake and sisig. Summer blooms with happy memories of gathering fruit, fishing, cooking, and eating together. When Lola returns home, summer turns to chilly breezes and falling leaves, but Lola has one more surprise. This is a beautiful, tender expression of family and love that spans generations and great distances. Each moment is described as a smell or taste, which engages all of readers’ senses. The illustrations add so much life and context to the words, especially for the Filipino dishes. The bright colors and visible brush strokes add warmth and capture the feelings of summer. The family is Filipino, and all have brown skin, black hair, and black eyes. Lola speaks Tagalog and Ilocano.
An extraordinary expression of Filipino culture and intergenerational familial bonds. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-297285-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
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Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
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