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BEFORE AFTER

Name: BEFORE AFTER
Author: Matthias Arégui
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7621-6

by Matthias Arégui ; Anne-Margot Ramstein ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 14, 2014

Peaceful, sometimes mildly humorous art provides gentle nudging toward a philosophical frame of mind.

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This harmonious album of clean-lined, very simple images in before-and-after pairs or short sequences practically compels viewers to ruminate about changes and seasons.

The book is entirely wordless, with just a few snatches of visual narrative in the form of multispread vignettes. Mirrored sun-moon pairs appear at the beginning and end, and a caterpillar seen chewing up a leaf on one spread flies off as a butterfly on the next, for instance. But this book is about many transformations, not just a few. In dozens of large, softly hued pictures of rolling landscapes or single trees, animals or manufactured objects against monochromatic backgrounds, the creators depict the passage of time. They do this through natural seasonal changes, with significant pairings like a rocking horse with a similarly curvilinear rocking chair or, taking a broader perspective, with opposing views of an urban skyline under construction and then finished. There are also allusive references, such as a pumpkin with a carriage. Human figures are rare—tiny when they do appear. Younger children will enjoy the mild challenge of figuring out the connections between, for instance, a slingshot and a broken window, a homing pigeon and an airmail envelope, a woolly sheep and (several steps and a knitted winter hat later) wood smoke drifting from a chimney in the snow.

Peaceful, sometimes mildly humorous art provides gentle nudging toward a philosophical frame of mind. (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-7636-7621-6

Page Count: 172

Publisher: Candlewick

Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
INSIDE OUTSIDE
by Anne-Margot Ramstein & Matthias Arégui ; illustrated by Anne-Margot Ramstein & Matthias Arégui

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.

The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)

Pub Date: June 21, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
A PERFECT PLACE TO PLAY
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Jim Valeri

- BOOK REVIEW
ON THE FIRST DAY OF FIRST GRADE
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Sarah Jennings

- BOOK REVIEW
FIVE LITTLE BUNNIES
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Dan Yaccarino

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THE HALLOWEEN TREE

by Susan McElroy Montanari ; illustrated by Teresa Martínez ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 6, 2019

Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard.

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A grouchy sapling on a Christmas tree farm finds that there are better things than lights and decorations for its branches.

A Grinch among the other trees on the farm is determined never to become a sappy Christmas tree—and never to leave its spot. Its determination makes it so: It grows gnarled and twisted and needle-less. As time passes, the farm is swallowed by the suburbs. The neighborhood kids dare one another to climb the scary, grumpy-looking tree, and soon, they are using its branches for their imaginative play, the tree serving as a pirate ship, a fort, a spaceship, and a dragon. But in winter, the tree stands alone and feels bereft and lonely for the first time ever, and it can’t look away from the decorated tree inside the house next to its lot. When some parents threaten to cut the “horrible” tree down, the tree thinks, “Not now that my limbs are full of happy children,” showing how far it has come. Happily for the tree, the children won’t give up so easily, and though the tree never wished to become a Christmas tree, it’s perfectly content being a “trick or tree.” Martinez’s digital illustrations play up the humorous dichotomy between the happy, aspiring Christmas trees (and their shoppers) and the grumpy tree, and the diverse humans are satisfyingly expressive.

Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard. (Picture book. 4-8)