Heart-wrenching, powerful, and beautifully realized.
Dad plans a pond in the backyard and speaks of all the wonderful things that it will hold. But it is a promise left unfulfilled.
When Dad dies, the uncompleted pond becomes a large part of the family’s grieving. The young narrator wants to see the pond completed, but for now they all see only “the muddy, messy hole that filled our hearts.” When the narrator fills the hole with water it makes the mess worse. Mother and older brother let out their anger, and the child retreats, screaming at Dad for dying. The family goes through the motions of their lives, and eventually the rebuilding of the pond brings them together. Then there is vegetation, insects, tadpoles, and dragonflies, just as Dad had envisioned, and they celebrate each sign of life. In time they are able to move on and start anew. Davies avoids sentimentality and pity in expressing the young narrator’s raw and painful emotions, as the survivors experience all the stages of grief, separately and together. Fisher’s dark-toned illustrations place the family deeply in shadow, encased in their pain. Only the pond has a degree of light, growing a bit stronger as time passes. The family emerges from the shadows emotionally, and finally, the image is bathed in misty light as they leave. Dad is white, and Mum appears to be Asian.
Heart-wrenching, powerful, and beautifully realized. (Picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-912050-70-3
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Graffeg/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
A delightful, understated triumph.
Sal Miller’s sense of self is shaken just before the start of first grade.
The protagonist of Oh, Sal (2022) confronts new challenges. For one thing, Sal’s younger sister, Poppy, now 2, is sharing what used to be Sal’s bedroom with her. And Sal’s high expectations for the first day of school are disappointed when her best friend and next-door neighbor, Griffen, is assigned to a different classroom. Griffen’s teacher, the charmingly named Ms. Flowers, seems pretty perfect. By contrast, in less bubbly Ms. McCormick’s class, Sal’s nametag mistakenly reads “Sally,” and Ms. McCormick’s tour of the school is fairly dull. Sal—bright and full of opinions and interest in the world around her—wears her feelings and hopes close to the surface. Fairly sophisticated language and observations stretch the target audience to include third and fourth graders for whom first grade may be a distant memory (or even, for some, never experienced in person). Henkes’ graceful, easy prose, sharp insights, and impressive ability to convey the way children think shine here. He invites readers to empathize with Sal, feeling her disappointment and annoyance with a world that doesn’t always understand her as well as the satisfaction with small victories that bring her back to herself: getting used to a major haircut and learning to connect with Ms. McCormick. Spot art from Henkes is scattered throughout. Characters’ races and ethnicities aren't mentioned; previous titles cued characters as white.
A delightful, understated triumph. (Fiction. 6-10)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9780063389625
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Feline fanciers will snap this up like catnip.
Catty Corner, who’s half cat, half girl, struggles when she attends school for the first time.
Until recently, Catty’s been homeschooled by her half-cat mom (her father is fully human), who teaches her subjects such as reading and string chasing, as well as the importance of following rules like “no midnight zoomies” and “no knocking over shiny things.” But when her mom gets an amazing job at the fish cannery, Catty contends with a whole new challenge: third grade at a real school. On her first day, Catty manages to break every single one of her parents’ big rules for outside the house: no hissing, scratching, or biting. She goes home crestfallen: “Today will go down in hissssstory as the worst first day of school ever.” But when her mom gives her a diary in which both Granny Tabby and Mom detailed their own difficult days as the only half cats, half girls at school, Catty slowly changes her attitude. Careful readers may wonder why Catty’s parents never socialized her with other children and why Granny Tabby’s diary wasn’t shared with her in advance of her first day of school. That said, with its pawsitively adorable puns and sweetly spunky protagonist, this quickly paced tale will please cat lovers; young readers looking for relatably awkward school stories will find it charming, too. The text is broken up by occasional watercolorlike illustrations depicting Catty as light-skinned with ginger hair and tail; her schoolmates are diverse.
Feline fanciers will snap this up like catnip. (Chapter book. 6-9)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781454956471
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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