A pleasant multilingual introduction.
Learn the names of exuberantly collaged plants and animals in seven different languages.
Bold botanical collages made from a loud assortment of recycled papers and newsprint dominate this board book’s largely white pages. Among the well-chosen assortment of plants are some that may be intimately familiar to many North American readers, like sunflower or apple tree, but there are also intriguing, lower-profile selections, such as baobab tree, mimosa, or snake plant, which might provide opportunities to learn about new flora and fauna. Befitting its towering status, the sequoia tree must be turned to portrait orientation, an enjoyable feature. Numbered and corresponding with a key on the back cover, the English, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Esperanto versions of the plant species are printed about the collage, albeit a bit haphazardly. The three languages that do not use the roman alphabet are also presented in romanized form; there is no pronunciation guide. Companion title Animals shares the same art style and features 17 different species. Occasionally in both books, the collaged paper is a tad busy, making the art feel slightly muddied, and some of the animals’ eyes, made of cut newsprint letters, have an eerily uncanny feel (looking at you, deer!). Extra touches of whimsy, such as a rainbow chameleon enthusiastically hunting a hopping cricket, make it satisfying to read.
A pleasant multilingual introduction. (Board book. 1-5)Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73622-643-8
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Blue Dot Kids Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Conceptually elegant, visually clean, uncluttered—and sure to inspire young artists everywhere.
A charming lesson for young Michaelangelos and O’Keeffes on drawing geometric shapes—and from them, simple representational images.
Artist-turned-educator-turned–children’s book creator Duquennoy has created an entertaining and inventive vehicle to teach youngsters both basic shapes and some simple drawings that can be made with them. As with the simultaneously published companion volume, Opposites, this book makes clever use of die-cut pages, here combined with clear acetate windows to show children how simple lines become familiar shapes, then toys and animals. Zack the chameleon draws a curved semicircle on one page; on the facing page, Zoe the zebra can be seen drawing a complementary semicircle on the clear window between them. When the page is turned, the two curved lines combine to form a circle. Zack draws more circles, and Zoe does the same, in seemingly random patterns, until a turn of the page creates a composite image of a teddy bear. Squares can be used, the two friends suggest, to draw a robot. Triangles are used to draw fish. All three shapes can be combined to construct a rudimentary but clearly recognizable “beautiful bird…ready to fly high in the sky.” It’s an admirably simple device to encourage crayon aficionados with still-developing motor skills to make the jump from scribbles to basic representational drawing.
Conceptually elegant, visually clean, uncluttered—and sure to inspire young artists everywhere. (Board book. 2-5)Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-2-74708-699-8
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Twirl/Chronicle
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
Gives little readers a head start on global citizenship.
Beginning language lessons for little ones.
Each spread in this board book introduces a different child on the verso and the language they speak. First is Santiago, a boy with brown skin and short, dark hair who speaks Spanish. His Spanish dialogue counting five oranges is highlighted in white under his portrait, with each line given its English translation below it. On the facing page there’s a picture of an orange tree labeled with the numerals 1 through 5 pointing to each orange and the words written in Spanish for these numbers. Subsequent spreads show Feng, a Chinese girl who counts bicycles in Mandarin; a white girl named Kirsty counting other children in English; Thomas, a black boy, counting giraffes in French; and Taro, who simply counts up to five in Japanese, with written characters for the numbers on a chalkboard (and five cats in the illustration though they aren’t named in the text). The pièce de résistance in the book’s design is a vertical strip of buttons to the side of the recto, labeled with each child’s face and the language they speak. Press the button and a recording of a child counting from one to five in the respective languages plays, offering readers the chance to learn by hearing. The companion book, How to Say I Love You, follows a similar pattern, highlighting the same languages but depicting different children as their speakers.
Gives little readers a head start on global citizenship. (Board book. 2-5)Pub Date: March 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-78603-080-1
Page Count: 10
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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