Fun with a capital F, this tale goes out to all those workaholic kids who need some.
A visual treat for the observant.
Studious, bespectacled, all-about-business William, who presents white, has achieved five of his six goals for summer: earn Math Camp MVP, read 50 books, learn Spanish, obtain a black belt in karate, and perform a perfect guitar recital. But the sixth is a stumper: “have most fun ever!” He must also constantly ward off distractions from his gregarious, rambunctious neighbor Anna, a young, brown-skinned girl who keeps interrupting his serious attempts at fun with her harebrained make-believe play. Wearing wacky, hodgepodge outfits, she invites him on adventures, like jumping the Grand Canyon on their motorcycles “to escape from the GREEDY TOAD PIRATE who keeps trying to steal our TREASURE with his long, sticky tongue.” William’s homemade fun meter shows only the saddest face during his solo play while Anna’s activities make it grin broadly. Young readers will have a rollicking good time as they guess what the little girl next door will think up next. Sharp-eyed readers will also locate a curious host of entertaining animals that sobersides William fails to notice. Ceulemans’ delightfully inventive, fantastical crayon sketches divide Anna’s zany world from William’s matter-of-fact one, offering readers lots to notice and giggle about. By the conclusion, the animals and even William have been absorbed into Anna’s crayon-filled universe.
Fun with a capital F, this tale goes out to all those workaholic kids who need some. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4549-3097-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted...
Reinvention is the name of the game for two blobs of clay.
A blue-eyed gray blob and a brown-eyed brown blob sit side by side, unsure as to what’s going to happen next. The gray anticipates an adventure, while the brown appears apprehensive. A pair of hands descends, and soon, amid a flurry of squishing and prodding and poking and sculpting, a handsome gray wolf and a stately brown owl emerge. The hands disappear, leaving the friends to their own devices. The owl is pleased, but the wolf convinces it that the best is yet to come. An ear pulled here and an extra eye placed there, and before you can shake a carving stick, a spurt of frenetic self-exploration—expressed as a tangled black scribble—reveals a succession of smug hybrid beasts. After all, the opportunity to become a “pig-e-phant” doesn’t come around every day. But the sound of approaching footsteps panics the pair of Picassos. How are they going to “fix [them]selves” on time? Soon a hippopotamus and peacock are staring bug-eyed at a returning pair of astonished hands. The creative naiveté of the “clay mates” is perfectly captured by Petty’s feisty, spot-on dialogue: “This was your idea…and it was a BAD one.” Eldridge’s endearing sculpted images are photographed against the stark white background of an artist’s work table to great effect.
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted fun of their own . (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-30311-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
The story’s slight but allows kids to practice identifying and dealing with their own big feelings.
The diverse group of kids from All Are Welcome (2018) this time gathers in a vacant lot with tools in hand to clear the debris and make something new. But therein lies the rub: What should the something new be? While the exact nature of the disagreement is unfortunately not made clear to readers, the big feelings that the children exhibit are very clear (and for readers who need practice reading facial clues, there’s a labeled chart of 15 in the frontmatter). This book’s refrain is “How can I help? / What can we do?” And the answers, spread over several pages and not spelled out in so many words but rather shown in the illustrations, are: talk it through, compromise, and see things from another perspective. As a guide for dealing with feelings and problem-solving, the book is a bit slim and lacks a solid story to hook readers. But, as with its predecessor, its strength is again the diversity on display in its pages. There’s a rainbow of skin tones and hair colors as well as abundant variation in hair texture, several children exhibit visible disabilities, including one child who uses a wheelchair, and there are markers of religious and cultural diversity. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at 29.6% of actual size.)
The story’s slight but allows kids to practice identifying and dealing with their own big feelings. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-57974-8
Page Count: 42
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
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