Fills the bill for small-group educational settings, but its audience is limited.
Dahl and Garbutt launch a punctuation series with this look at an essential mark: the period.
A period clad in a hard hat introduces readers to its job, though other periods also interject their two cents in dialogue bubbles. Dahl emphasizes the sentence-ending job of a period, devoting a few pages to its use in abbreviations. Garbutt poses the roly-poly periods, who sport stick arms and legs and expressive faces, in humorous situations. For instance, they are menaced by a threatening run-on–sentence tsunami or exhausted when a bunch of text doesn’t offer a place to stop and take a breath. The pink, purple, and blue palette gives the book a retro feel; text that is not a part of the story plays a role in providing readers with examples. Though diligent and not without a sense of fun, the book is not a total success. Small but vital details in the pictures make this difficult to share with large groups or entire classes, limiting its usefulness, and while some parts are a bit funny, it’s not likely kids will choose this on their own. Backmatter includes a summary of the period’s uses, a glossary, scant lists of resources for further information, and three critical thinking questions. Publishing simultaneously are Commas Say “Take a Break”, Exclamation Points Say “Wow!”, and Question Marks Say “What?”.
Fills the bill for small-group educational settings, but its audience is limited. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5158-4054-1
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Picture Window Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For young architects and kids interested in learning about the world.
An Asian boy on a skateboard describes a variety of domiciles.
Inside the contemporary house the child’s family (also Asian) lives in, family members are seen eating, sleeping, studying, watching TV (with retro rabbit ears), and talking on a wall phone, a mixture of details that may evoke the childhood of the author or illustrator. The narrator then takes off in an old-fashioned plane to describe houses in Thailand, Togo, Mongolia, Russia, and Greenland. Exteriors and interiors of the five houses appear in double-page spreads with explanatory text (in a small font) about materials, styles, and construction details embedded within the illustrations; each includes a family and its appropriate animals. The main text (in a large font) is simple and sometimes-awkward: “There are houses wherever people live. Even though houses have different appearances in every country, each one is someone’s precious home.” The explanatory text is a little more advanced and generally flows better. The choice of unusual houses, especially the felt gers of Mongolia and the clay houses of Togo, offers young readers a chance to explore aspects of everyday life in several countries. Refreshingly, the book takes care to emphasize that the Inuit of Greenland live in “wooden or brick houses,” and that igloos are temporary shelters used on hunting trips. The naïve illustrative style is eye-catching and friendly, and the photos in the back endpapers are a useful addition.
For young architects and kids interested in learning about the world. (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-939248-19-0
Page Count: 36
Publisher: TanTan
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
Conceptually intriguing but insufficiently visually connected to Cornell’s aesthetic.
A boy amasses a collection of assorted objects and uses them to make art.
As a child, Joey has keen, eclectic preferences for his collection of items. A cork ball, a soap-bubble pipe, a rusty iron safe, a feather that falls fresh off a bird—Joey saves everything “that spark[s] his imagination or delight[s] his eye.” Asked what his plans for his oddments are, he’s unbothered: “Who knows?” After a while, he knows: “sifting, layering, mixing” the objects creates sculpture. His family finds his pieces “heavenly” and “magical”—and so do many other people after Joey grows up to become a professional artist using the same media, though the adult career and work of Joseph Cornell are oddly unmentioned except in the author’s note. Fleming does a bang-up job explaining Joey’s imaginative combination of objects to evoke emotion. DuBois’ acrylic illustrations are a mixed bag: magnificent composition, and the value extremes on a few spreads are dramatically gorgeous; however, figures are stiff, more like frozen white mannequins than humans—Joey often looks like a doll—and Joey’s sculptures appear quaint but murky and nondeliberate (the opposite of Cornell’s real pieces). Three reproductions of Cornell’s work are fruitlessly tiny. Alison Baverstock’s Joseph Cornell: Secrets in Box (2003), now sadly out-of-print, is the superior treatment.
Conceptually intriguing but insufficiently visually connected to Cornell’s aesthetic. (bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-55238-0
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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