A young adult comes home in Chernysheva’s uplifting wordless picture book.
A lone house stands beside an outstretched tree in a vast, empty field. The light-skinned traveler boards a yellow bus, its driver just a mere shadow. The yellow bus makes its way through the crowded streets of Moscow as buildings and churches loom overhead in a mishmash of lines and blank spaces. On and on the bus goes until it deposits the traveler onto that vast, empty field to make the way to the house, where a small figure tends the garden. The gardener—a parent or grandparent, perhaps—looks up. The giant traveler towers over the minuscule gardener in a series of double-page spreads that play with space and perspective in unusual ways. Chernysheva’s plain, mostly colorless artwork maintains a focus on the long journey and eventual reunion thanks to the book’s languid pace. Color (primarily red and yellow) emerges during seemingly minor yet significant moments, drawing attention to each character’s love for the other. A deep embrace and a sweet kiss to the cheek cement the relationship between the two adults. The old gardener stirs up a pot of warm stew, and the traveler (now the size of a child) sits down amid the garden.
As comforting as a home-cooked meal. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-77306-209-9
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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Through 20 short poems, Maestro Mouse invites readers to meet a series of animals who have lessons to impart and a symphony to perform.
Brown, author of The DaVinci Code (2003) and other wildly popular titles for adults, here offers young listeners a poetry collection accompanied by music: a “symphony” performed, for readers equipped with an audio device and an internet connection, by the Zagreb Festival Orchestra. From the introduction of the conductor and the opening “Woodbird Welcome” to the closing “Cricket Lullaby,” the writer/composer uses poems made of three to eight rhyming couplets, each line with four strong beats, to introduce the animals who will be revealed in the final double gatefold as the players in an all-animal orchestra. Each poem also contains a lesson, reinforced by a short message (often on a banner or signpost). Thus, “When life trips them up a bit, / Cats just make the best of it” concludes the poem “Clumsy Kittens,” which is encapsulated by “Falling down is part of life. The best thing to do is get back on your feet!” The individual songs and poems may appeal to the intended audience, but collectively they don’t have enough variety to be read aloud straight through. Nor does the gathering of the orchestra provide a narrative arc. Batori’s cartoon illustrations are whimsically engaging, however. They include puzzles: hard-to-find letters that are said to form anagrams of instrument names and a bee who turns up somewhere in every scene.
Aims high but falls flat. (Complete composition not available for review.) (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-12384-3
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Rodale Kids
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
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Spending a day with Gong Gong doesn’t sound like very much fun to May.
Gong Gong doesn’t speak English, and May doesn’t know Chinese. How can they have a good day together? As they stroll through an urban Chinatown, May’s perpetually sanguine maternal grandfather chats with friends and visits shops. At each stop, Cantonese words fly back and forth, many clearly pointed at May, who understands none of it. It’s equally exasperating trying to communicate with Gong Gong in English, and by the time they join a card game in the park with Gong Gong’s friends, May is tired, hungry, and frustrated. But although it seems like Gong Gong hasn’t been attentive so far, when May’s day finally comes to a head, it is clear that he has. First-person text gives glimpses into May’s lively thoughts as they evolve through the day, and Gong Gong’s unchangingly jolly face reflects what could be mistaken for blithe obliviousness but is actually his way of showing love through sharing the people and places of his life. Through adorable illustrations that exude humor and warmth, this portrait of intergenerational affection is also a tribute to life in Chinatown neighborhoods: Street vendors, a busker playing a Chinese violin, a dim sum restaurant, and more all combine to add a distinctive texture.
A multilayered, endearing treasure of a day. (glossary) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77321-429-0
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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Even more alliterative hanky-panky from the creators of The Wonky Donkey (2010).
Operating on the principle (valid, here) that anything worth doing is worth overdoing, Smith and Cowley give their wildly popular Wonky Donkey a daughter—who, being “cute and small,” was a “dinky donkey”; having “beautiful long eyelashes” she was in consequence a “blinky dinky donkey”; and so on…and on…and on until the cumulative chorus sails past silly and ludicrous to irresistibly hysterical: “She was a stinky funky plinky-plonky winky-tinky,” etc. The repeating “Hee Haw!” chorus hardly suggests what any audience’s escalating response will be. In the illustrations the daughter sports her parent’s big, shiny eyes and winsome grin while posing in a multicolored mohawk next to a rustic boombox (“She was a punky blinky”), painting her hooves pink, crossing her rear legs to signal a need to pee (“winky-tinky inky-pinky”), demonstrating her smelliness with the help of a histrionic hummingbird, and finally cozying up to her proud, evidently single parent (there’s no sign of another) for a closing cuddle.
Should be packaged with an oxygen supply, as it will incontestably elicit uncontrollable gales of giggles. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-60083-4
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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