Some time in the 19th century, a sailor created this sea chantey, a rhythmic song to keep him and his mates working in tandem to keep a ship afloat. McCurdy (Trapped by the Ice!, 1997, etc.) has adapted the chantey into a picture book, with one line on each page—“Oh, A is the anchor and that you all know”—a scratchboard illustration, and a definition of terms below the picture. He makes a mighty effort toward clarity in describing and illustrating this US Navy frigate, although sometimes the vocabulary runs away with him, e.g., “Capstan: A large, spool-shaped winch . . . turned by sailors using capstan bars.” The function of chanteys is explained in a preface, and the whole chantey is reproduced at the end and keyed to an illustration of the full frigate, so all the parts can be seen together. The rectilinear geometry of the scratchboard illustrations is softened by watercolors to resemble old prints, and by the elegant angles found in various perspectives. The sailors in water-blue uniforms are young and rosy, or old and grizzled, and word-buffs and nautical enthusiasts will find plenty to pore over—halyards and lanyards, jibs and vangs. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-395-84167-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This heavily earnest celebration of multi-ethnicity combines full-bleed paintings of smiling children, viewed through a golden haze dancing, playing, planting seedlings, and the like, with a hyperbolic, disconnected text—``Dark as leopard spots, light as sand,/Children buzz with laughter that kisses our land...''— printed in wavy lines. Literal-minded readers may have trouble with the author's premise, that ``Children come in all the colors of the earth and sky and sea'' (green? blue?), and most of the children here, though of diverse and mixed racial ancestry, wear shorts and T-shirts and seem to be about the same age. Hamanaka has chosen a worthy theme, but she develops it without the humor or imagination that animates her Screen of Frogs (1993). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-11131-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
Quietly contemplative and thoroughly lovely.
A child finds adventure and a change of perspective on a dreary day.
Clouds cover everything in a palette of unending gray, creating a sense of ennui and gloom. A child stands alone, head down, feeling as gray as the day, and decides to ride through town on an old bike. Pops of color throughout the grayscale illustrations go unnoticed—there are yellow leaves scattered about, and the parking lot is filled with bright yellow buses, but this child, who has skin the grayish white of the page, sees only the empty playground, creaky swings, a sad merry-go-round, and lonely seesaws. But look—there’s a narrow winding path just beyond the fence, something to explore. There are things to be noticed, leaves to be crunched, and discoveries to be made. Imagination takes over, along with senses of wonderment and calm, as the child watches a large blue bird fly over the area. The ride home is quite different, joyful and filled with color previously ignored, reaffirming the change in the rider’s outlook. The descriptive, spare text filled with imagery and onomatopoeia is well aligned with well-rendered art highlighting all the colors that brighten the not-so-gray day and allowing readers to see what the protagonist struggles to understand, that “anything can happen…on a gray day.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Quietly contemplative and thoroughly lovely. (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781797210896
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
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