An educational narrative guide to different methods of fabric production.
Ten-year-old sisters learn how to make clothes for their dolls in Mical and Assaf Rezoni’s illustrated children’s book.
On their tenth birthday, twins Maya and Rumi receive a pair of dolls respectively named Jade and Miri as a gift from a family friend. The two girls feel that Miri and Jade’s clothes are too old-fashioned, so they set out to make their own one-of-a-kind homemade outfits from scratch. Inspired by a class project from several years ago, Maya and Rumi acquire black silkworm eggs from the Albuquerque Zoo and feed them leaves from a mulberry tree in their front yard. Rumi is shocked to learn that harvesting silk may require boiling the worms alive in their cocoons, so the twins instead research a more humane method…that disappointingly doesn’t result in very much silk. The girls then turn to cotton, which they plant in their backyard, but it grows much too slowly. “We might turn eleven before the cotton plants [mature] into cotton fiber,” Rumi moans. However, the girls persevere, and together they are able to process enough yarn to make a sweater and a scarf for Miri. They spot their father leaving the house with a box of used clothing, which they reuse to make Miri and Jade items to go with their existing homespun pieces. The Rezonis carefully detail each step of Maya and Rumi’s operation in a thoughtful, educational manner that highlights just how hard it truly is to make cloth. While their color illustrations of the children and dolls can seem unpleasantly uncanny, the portrayal of the steps of boiling silk and a diagram detailing the stages of cotton-growing appear to be well researched. This short debut book successfully conveys a message about the importance of being environmentally conscious and reusing fabric during clothing production; the story addresses a gap in children’s narrative nonfiction in a way that enterprising young readers will likely enjoy.
An educational narrative guide to different methods of fabric production.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2024
ISBN: 9781665764704
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock”...
The theme of persistence (for better or worse) links four tales of magic, trickery, and near disasters.
Lachenmeyer freely borrows familiar folkloric elements, subjecting them to mildly comical twists. In the nearly wordless “Hip Hop Wish,” a frog inadvertently rubs a magic lamp and finds itself saddled with an importunate genie eager to shower it with inappropriate goods and riches. In the title tale, an increasingly annoyed music-hating witch transforms a persistent minstrel into a still-warbling cow, horse, sheep, goat, pig, duck, and rock in succession—then is horrified to catch herself humming a tune. Athesius the sorcerer outwits Warthius, a rival trying to steal his spells via a parrot, by casting silly ones in Ig-pay Atin-lay in the third episode, and in the finale, a painter’s repeated efforts to create a flattering portrait of an ogre king nearly get him thrown into a dungeon…until he suddenly understands what an ogre’s idea of “flattering” might be. The narratives, dialogue, and sound effects leave plenty of elbow room in Blocker’s big, brightly colored panels for the expressive animal and human(ish) figures—most of the latter being light skinned except for the golden genie, the blue ogre, and several people of color in the “Sorcerer’s New Pet.”
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock” music. (Graphic short stories. 8-10)Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59643-750-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
The small, novel-like format (5.5 x 8 inches) will most likely appeal to reluctant or recently independent readers, who...
This much-abridged recreation of the famous tale by Hans Christian Andersen is smoothly told, following the original structure of seven short chapters, while leaving out numerous details and the Christian elements of the original.
Characters (a wolf) and incidents (a final confrontation between Gerda and the Snow Queen) have been added. Because of the elision and truncation of incidents from the original story, Gerda’s quest is less immediate and heart wrenching, and the motivations of many of the characters she meets are harder to understand. For example, it is not clear that the old woman with the magical garden tries to keep Gerda with her because she has always longed for a daughter, nor is the precarious situation of the outlaw’s daughter, who, in the original, sleeps with a knife at her side, apparent. The sophisticated, surreal and dreamlike illustrations created through mixed media, including manipulated photographs of dolls, flowers and paper constructions, often charmingly spill over onto the pages of text.
The small, novel-like format (5.5 x 8 inches) will most likely appeal to reluctant or recently independent readers, who might be encouraged by this simple retelling to seek fuller versions of the tale. (Fairy tale. 8-10)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-84686-662-3
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
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