A warm and spirited invitation to dreamland.
Smiles and wild creatures abound in this playful mother-child bedtime routine.
Each of mom’s friendly suggestions to get a move on is met with a “NOT YET!” and a delaying protest: “I’m learning to fly, / with geese in the sky!” and “If I tickle giraffe, / She’ll giggle and laugh!” and “Monkey needs a squeeze… / she sleeps in those trees!” Like many celebrities who try to write for children, film actor Sen isn’t the most adroit versifier (“Elephant must floss, / to make his tusk gloss”), but she does take the drama out of the nightly ritual by making it more a game than a contest of wills. So does Curnick, with smiles all round on human and animal faces alike. The brown skins of the bright-eyed parent and child suggest South Asian heritage, and the bedroom, bath, and clothing in the domestic scenes that alternate with imagined outdoor ones in the painted illustrations are Western in style and appearance. Readers can track the child’s reluctant bedtime progress in the illustrations, as gradually red overalls are shed in favor of blue-striped pajamas and bunny slippers in both real-life and imagined scenes. One last try—“I will kiss kangaroo!”—gets a firm parental veto with “NO, now I’ll kiss you!” and a final tuck-in: “And I love you too! / Night-night!”
A warm and spirited invitation to dreamland. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-91095-900-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Otter-Barry
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
Otherworldly but with luminous pictures of a remote community.
Seb’s coastal village lies so far north the sun doesn’t shine during winter, making even daytime beach treasure hunts with his walrus companion “cold, dreary, and dark as night.”
Wearing his distinctive, Viking-horned winter hat, Seb sets out to find some sun for his small but diverse community. Little, pale Seb greets local friends: “old Bruce Brewster,” a darker-skinned, bearded fisherman; a bespectacled white knitter named Mrs. Vandermuss; a mixed group of miners sipping soup and coffee; and Mr. and Mrs. Muktuk, cued as Pacific Northwest Native Americans who wear furred parkas and carve totem poles. These neighbors provide pockets of warmth, light, and encouragement. Similarly, Gigot’s artwork, while overcast, provides engrossing details in street and window vignettes, with patches of lemony yellows and arctic whites contributing buoying moments of firelight, lamplight, and snow. The text, set in a candlelight yellow, glows on inky backgrounds. Readers might squint at what seem at first to be gloomy, digitally painted pencil illustrations, but they will soon feel lifted in noting people of varying skin tones, occupations, and ages, all engaged in productive work. Seb feels his work is to find sunlight for his neighbors, even if it means rowing all the way out to sea. Some might find the ending contrived, but it’s hard not to feel warmed by a luminous resolution so full of love.
Otherworldly but with luminous pictures of a remote community. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9990249-0-4
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Ripple Grove
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not much beyond a gimmick, and one that’s suitable only for home libraries.
Die-cut animal shapes invite young artists to fill in traced outlines and create stories around them in this Indian import.
As a drawing game, at least, this is definitely on the minimalist side. Hamir, a Gujarati artist associated with the Indigenous Pithora style, contributes a few large, generic animal shapes—a monkey, a bird, two identical whales, a camel, and a cat—cut into sheets that are interleaved among the pages. These can be flipped right and left so that facing titular “twins” can be traced onto pages that are otherwise largely blank except for scattered dots, a few small geometric shapes, lightly traced figures, and, in one spread, a set of empty dialogue balloons, all added by Shah. Wolf supplies five instructional story prompts in small type that progress from a simple “What happens next?” to more developed, and promising, scenarios (“Oops! He’s eaten his twin’s meal! Draw what happens next”). The book concludes with a general invitation to conjure a story from scratch on a totally blank final page. Young yarn-spinners may enjoy the exercises, but they aren’t going to come away with any sense of Pithora motifs or the traditional stories they are typically created to tell.
Not much beyond a gimmick, and one that’s suitable only for home libraries. (Coloring book. 4-6)Pub Date: June 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-93-83145-71-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Tara Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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