A sweet book, though it’s undermined by character choice.
A (gorilla) parent’s dream for a child.
First-person narration relates the joys and hopes a new parent feels in this offering from Cordell. “We looked upon you, impossible you, and we felt everything,” reads the text in an early spread, revealing heartfelt and earnest sentiments about parental love. This tone is undermined, however, by the painterly watercolor-and-ink illustrations of a semianthropomorphized gorilla family rather than a human family or even fully anthropomorphic animals. These gorillas live in furnished grass huts and use tools but go unclothed and walk on their knuckles. Are they gorillas in order to try to engage child readers with a text that is essentially about validating and representing parental love? Perhaps, but the juxtaposition is rather jarring. One gorilla parent is the text’s narrator/dreamer, and the dream envisions the child growing and changing, having triumphs and hardships. The child becomes a painter, and at the end of the dream, the parents stand in front of their small hut and wave goodbye as the child (now grown) leaves home with paintbrushes strapped to its back in something like a quiver. In waking life, the parents gaze at their infant in its crib and wonder “what will you dream?” and the book ends with a closing portrait of the family.
A sweet book, though it’s undermined by character choice. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4847-7340-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Murphy’s I See I Learn series continues with two new titles aimed at teaching kids valuable emotional and social skills. Percy’s day is not going well. He can’t find his other shoe, doesn’t want to leave his playdate and doesn’t feel like eating at dinnertime or sleeping at bedtime. Vocabulary words for Percy's feelings (frustrated, grumpy) are set in bold type, while body language speaks to them. His parents encourage him to calm down, stop and think, take a deep breath, talk about it and count to ten. Backmatter includes a visual summary of feelings and ways to deal with them and “A Closer Look,” which poses questions to readers to help them analyze their own feelings and behaviors. Also coming out in February 2011 is Camille’s Team. Camille’s favorite beach activity is building a sand fort. As three friends arrive, they decide to each build their own forts, too. But progress is slow working separately. When they decide to team up and cooperate, other beachgoers stop and take notice of the result. Murphy explicates the steps to good cooperation with insets and diagrams and includes some thought-provoking follow-up questions. The simple, brightly colored illustrations keep the focus on the facial expressions and body language of his anthropomorphized cast of characters. Two more solid entries to a useful, if not particularly artful series. (Picture book. 3-5)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58089-460-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
Corduroy’s pocket has nothing on Max’s. While sainted big sister Ruby scurries busily about restoring order to his gloriously cluttered room, Max surreptitiously rescues treasures from the trash, including the dirt from his Power City Rocker Crusher dump truck, an open tube of “Miracle Bubbles,” ants escaped from the ant farm, an ancient Easter egg, and a half-melted Popsicle. Wells hasn’t changed her stumpy sibs, aside from making them even bigger and more portly, but here she places them amidst low relief collages constructed from, among other media, paper, feathers, gravel, rubber ants, and large, brightly colored blobs of—something. The effect isn’t entirely successful; though everything bursts from Max’s bulging pocket in a grand climactic spill, it hasn’t mixed or smeared together at all, making a mess that is, paradoxically, very clean-looking. Still, it’s a good try, as droll as ever, and sure to draw plenty of giggles from the burgeoning Max and Ruby fan club. (Picture book. 3-5)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-670-89218-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
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