A young Native American child prepares to leave home and family for compulsory Indian School in this quietly poetic Canadian import. On each of her last three days, Shi-shi-etko (“She Loves To Play In The Water”) goes out with a different adult to gather impressions of her people’s ways and the natural world around her: standing in a creek, listening to her mother singing, for instance, she “memorized each shiny rock, / the sand beneath her feet, / crayfish and minnows and tadpoles.” On succeeding days she does the same with her father and her Yayah (grandmother), promising herself that she will not forget. Using a palette of saturated blues and rich autumnal reds and golds, LaFave places a child in modern dress (as the author explains in a foreword, the last Indian boarding school in Canada did not close until 1984) within landscapes whose strong, curving lines evoke subdued but intense feelings underlying this poignant tale of taking leave. Except in the foreword, Campbell never mentions where the child is going—so Shi-shi-etko’s sadness and determination will also resonate with any child who’s had to leave a familiar world behind. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-88899-659-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
The poster boy for relentless mischief-makers everywhere, first encountered in No, David! (1998), gives his weary mother a rest by going to school. Naturally, he’s tardy, and that’s but the first in a long string of offenses—“Sit down, David! Keep your hands to yourself! PAY ATTENTION!”—that culminates in an afterschool stint. Children will, of course, recognize every line of the text and every one of David’s moves, and although he doesn’t exhibit the larger- than-life quality that made him a tall-tale anti-hero in his first appearance, his round-headed, gap-toothed enthusiasm is still endearing. For all his disruptive behavior, he shows not a trace of malice, and it’ll be easy for readers to want to encourage his further exploits. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-48087-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
