Though this first entry is a failure, there’s potential here for this series if its producers are willing to immerse...
First of a series dedicated to children around the world, this photo essay is a well-intentioned snapshot of the life of 8-year-old Noel, growing up in a Tanzanian village near Mount Kilimanjaro.
With this book of big heart and moderate resources, self-described missionary Duda makes the most of a 2016 visit to Tanzania by attempting to capture Noel’s story. Using her own photographs, the author shows his school, home, and daily life. Squeezing in some elementary Swahili (“jambo/hello”; “karibu/welcome”; “asante/thank you”), the book also includes a trip to the village marketplace. The intention of this new series is to introduce young American readers to children around the globe; according to the back cover, “The better we know each other, the easier it is to become friends.” If readers are expecting an expansive, diverse view of Tanzanian culture and the breadth of the experience and possibility of growing up on the African continent, this leaves much to be desired. While its approach is earnest and sincere, it is nevertheless a narrow, representative framing without even other voices drawn from the local Tanzanian community to amplify Noel’s. In the end it simply feels like the author’s brief, international faith-based field trip. Do readers meet Noel or simply browse the stories and photos the author brought back with her?
Though this first entry is a failure, there’s potential here for this series if its producers are willing to immerse themselves. Here’s to it. (Informational picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: April 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9972667-1-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: River Junction
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the...
An all-zombie-all-the-time zombiefest, featuring a bunch of grade-school kids, including protagonist Stink and his happy comrades.
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the streets in the time-honored stiff-armed, stiff-legged fashion. McDonald signals her intent on page one: “Stink and Webster were playing Attack of the Knitting Needle Zombies when Fred Zombie’s eye fell off and rolled across the floor.” The farce is as broad as the Atlantic, with enough spookiness just below the surface to provide the all-important shivers. Accompanied by Reynolds’ drawings—dozens of scene-setting gems with good, creepy living dead—McDonald shapes chapters around zombie motifs: making zombie costumes, eating zombie fare at school, reading zombie books each other to reach the one-million-minutes-of-reading challenge. When the zombie walk happens, it delivers solid zombie awfulness. McDonald’s feel-good tone is deeply encouraging for readers to get up and do this for themselves because it looks like so much darned fun, while the sub-message—that reading grows “strong hearts and minds,” as well as teeth and bones—is enough of a vital interest to the story line to be taken at face value.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5692-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent.
Published in magazines, never seen since / Now resurrected for pleasure intense / Versified episodes numbering four / Featuring Marco, and Horton and more!
All of the entries in this follow-up to The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories (2011) involve a certain amount of sharp dealing. Horton carries a Kwuggerbug through crocodile-infested waters and up a steep mountain because “a deal is a deal”—and then is cheated out of his promised share of delicious Beezlenuts. Officer Pat heads off escalating, imagined disasters on Mulberry Street by clubbing a pesky gnat. Marco (originally met on that same Mulberry Street) concocts a baroque excuse for being late to school. In the closer, a smooth-talking Grinch (not the green sort) sells a gullible Hoobub a piece of string. In a lively introduction, uber-fan Charles D. Cohen (The Seuss, The Whole Seuss, and Nothing but the Seuss, 2002) provides publishing histories, places characters and settings in Seussian context, and offers insights into, for instance, the origin of “Grinch.” Along with predictably engaging wordplay—“He climbed. He grew dizzy. His ankles grew numb. / But he climbed and he climbed and he clum and he clum”—each tale features bright, crisply reproduced renditions of its original illustrations. Except for “The Hoobub and the Grinch,” which has been jammed into a single spread, the verses and pictures are laid out in spacious, visually appealing ways.
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-38298-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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