A colorful, well-designed adventure suitable for children with various levels of Spanish comprehension or even a bilingual...
A charming, illustrated Spanish-language children’s book about the escapades of an adventurous iguana.
The story of Liliana the iguana is simple: She lives near the beach and makes friends as she goes on various fun adventures. She meets and plays with more and more characters—a frog, a wasp, a chameleon—as they create new games, like playing with an apple or going in the sea. It’s a familiar story but a comforting one. The simple plot structure and eye-catching, beautiful illustrations make for an enjoyable read. The artwork is made from several mediums, including penciled illustrations, paint, colorful paper cutouts and computer graphics. The artist juxtaposes complex, striking hand-drawn and painted images with simpler, childlike drawings in illustrations that often show the magic and beauty of a child’s imaginative mind. Rhyme and alliteration are used often, the combination of which produces a lovely, songlike effect, perfect for reading aloud to young children. Additionally, for educational effect, the text includes certain words—i.e., diversion or intention—most young children won’t know. In a welcome change of pace, the conclusion turns the reading into an interactive experience that features exciting activity instructions, including how to make puppets that look like the characters in the story. In a pleasant detail for the puppet-making process, the book even provides paper stock that’s similar to the character designs in the narrative. The book also teaches children how to play a fun game that the friends play in the story.
A colorful, well-designed adventure suitable for children with various levels of Spanish comprehension or even a bilingual educational setting.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2012
ISBN: 978-1438982410
Page Count: 52
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
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BOOK REVIEW
A validating and breathtaking next chapter of a Mother Goose favorite.
Humpty Dumpty, classically portrayed as an egg, recounts what happened after he fell off the wall in Santat’s latest.
An avid ornithophile, Humpty had loved being atop a high wall to be close to the birds, but after his fall and reassembly by the king’s men, high places—even his lofted bed—become intolerable. As he puts it, “There were some parts that couldn’t be healed with bandages and glue.” Although fear bars Humpty from many of his passions, it is the birds he misses the most, and he painstakingly builds (after several papercut-punctuated attempts) a beautiful paper plane to fly among them. But when the plane lands on the very wall Humpty has so doggedly been avoiding, he faces the choice of continuing to follow his fear or to break free of it, which he does, going from cracked egg to powerful flight in a sequence of stunning spreads. Santat applies his considerable talent for intertwining visual and textual, whimsy and gravity to his consideration of trauma and the oft-overlooked importance of self-determined recovery. While this newest addition to Santat’s successes will inevitably (and deservedly) be lauded, younger readers may not notice the de-emphasis of an equally important part of recovery: that it is not compulsory—it is OK not to be OK.
A validating and breathtaking next chapter of a Mother Goose favorite. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62672-682-6
Page Count: 45
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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