There is a timeless quality to this contemporary story about a Kenyan boy and his mother stretching their food to feed all their friends. As he walks to market with his mom, Adika invites everyone he sees to a pancake dinner, but Mama Panya is worried. She needn’t be, because all the guests come bearing food. To accompany the few pancakes, there is milk and butter from the Maasai children’s cattle, fish caught by the old man, Mzee Odolo, flour for another day, and salt and cardamom. Rafiki Kaya even brings her mbira, her thumb piano. The old tradition of sharing all one’s food with others works again. With the repetition of the phrase “a little bit and a little bit more,” the folkloric feeling intensifies. The watercolor paintings are filled with details of the countryside and the marketplace, although the naïve portrayal of the adults and children tends to be a bit broad. With a recipe for spicy pancakes, information about local animals and village life in Kenya, some general facts and a map, this story will be a welcome addition to a school unit as well as traditional storytime. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-84148-139-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
Self-worth is always worth bolstering, but the positive message here is clouded by muddled subtexts and visual cues.
Dark-skinned children are more likely to be confused than comforted by this unvarnished esteem-builder.
Looking sheepish and unhappy in the pictures but sounding angry, a young boy cites teasing comments from lighter-skinned peers about his skin color, hair and other features. “I squirmed and wiggled / as they giggled at my teeth so white. / ‘You can be our flashlight at night. / Just smile and we’ll be alright.’ ” The emotional skies clear, though, after his mother supplies both a pep talk (“Look in the mirror and / love what you see!”) and a plate of chocolate cupcakes to share with his erstwhile tormentors. Evans, too, sends a mixed message in the ways he portrays the figures he poses against sketchy urban backdrops. Opposite the line about the narrator’s “flashlight,” the boy’s teeth are both hardly visible (in contrast to the whites of his big, bright eyes) and colored a lower-contrast ivory to boot, and in several scenes his mouth is so inconspicuous and oddly placed that his nose might be mistaken for smiling lips. More troubling, to judge from their postures and expressions, the other children’s mockery may come across to readers as just friendly banter—particularly in light of a final scene that is all frosting-smeared happy faces and mutual amity—instead of the hurtful words the narrator perceives.
Self-worth is always worth bolstering, but the positive message here is clouded by muddled subtexts and visual cues. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-60326-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
McClements takes a distinctly parental point of view in portraying a young veggie-hater’s nightly dinner-table performance. “Time for another fun-filled hour,” observes Dad grimly, setting down a plate holding three seemingly boulder-sized peas in front of the hyper-dramatic lad who narrates. One touch of pea to tongue is all it takes to elicit writhing fingers (“Ahh . . . I knew it would start with the fingers”), curling toes (“That’s a new one!”) and twitches that are violent enough to knock over the chair as the child is transformed into . . . “a veggie monster!” Peas choked down at last, the crisis ends—but, of course, there’s always tomorrow’s broccoli. Created with a mix of clipped photo-bits of food and utensils and figures cut from brown paper, the illustrations have a simple look that goes with the pared-down text, the perspectives and dramatic effect reminiscent of Mo Willems’s Pigeon books, but it doesn’t really capture the drama like Lauren Child’s I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato (2000). Still, it may help similarly picky children, and their caregivers, get over taking themselves too seriously. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59990-061-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2007
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