A joyful and tender story of building understanding and generational bonds.
A young girl of South Asian descent helps her grandmother grapple with age-old assumptions about skin color.
Brown-skinned Ritu lounges in a sunny spot indoors, much to the chagrin of her traditionally attired Nani (maternal grandmother). Ritu loves the sun and doesn’t mind her tanned skin, unlike Nani, who cautions her about turning “as dark as me.” But a shift occurs one afternoon as the sun-worshipping Ritu sits with Nani and learns about her grandmother’s own childhood experiences: Nani’s mother worried about her daughter's skin darkening, and Nani felt lonely, watching the other children play. Slowly grandmother and granddaughter embrace each other’s point of view and their collective past as this simple yet powerful and empathetic tale unfolds. Hossain’s exquisitely crafted similes uplift the prose: Rotis “are pale and round and speckled with brown craters”; “aloo bhaji is like the sun, bright and hot and yellow”; and the characters’ hands are the “rich brown of henna and tea steeped just right.” Elegantly composed yet infused with a childlike sensibility, López’s vivid illustrations blend past and present beautifully as Nani’s reminiscences mingle with present day. Just as Joanna Ho’s Eyes That Kiss in the Corners (2021) celebrated East Asian heritage, this picture book will be a welcome addition to South Asian diasporic stories and will encourage age-appropriate dialogue about colorism, self-image, and beauty standards.
A joyful and tender story of building understanding and generational bonds. (author’s note, recipe) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9780593806692
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for...
A gentle voice and familiar pitfalls characterize this tale of a boy navigating the risky road to responsibility.
Gavin is new to his neighborhood and Carver Elementary. He likes his new friend, Richard, and has a typically contentious relationship with his older sister, Danielle. When Gavin’s desire to impress Richard sets off a disastrous chain of events, the boy struggles to evade responsibility for his actions. “After all, it isn’t his fault that Danielle’s snow globe got broken. Sure, he shouldn’t have been in her room—but then, she shouldn’t be keeping candy in her room to tempt him. Anybody would be tempted. Anybody!” opines Gavin once he learns the punishment for his crime. While Gavin has a charming Everyboy quality, and his aversion to Aunt Myrtle’s yapping little dog rings true, little about Gavin distinguishes him from other trouble-prone protagonists. He is, regrettably, forgettable. Coretta Scott King Honor winner English (Francie, 1999) is a teacher whose storytelling usually benefits from her day job. Unfortunately, the pizzazz of classroom chaos is largely absent from this series opener.
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for subsequent volumes. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-97044-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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