by Nikki Grimes & illustrated by Betsy Lewin ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 30, 2000
A list defining the Swahili words (with pronunciations) and a bare-bones map of the country complete this compelling package.
Thirteen brief, playful poems give us a glimpse at life in rural Tanzania, including its offshore island, Zanzibar.
Spiced with Swahili words, Grimes’s verses introduce a jam-packed bus, animals, foods, the marketplace, and several mischievous children. Her impressions are the result of a year she spent in this East African country on a research grant, yet there is a universal appeal too, as when a child burns his tongue on hot peppers. Breezy pen-and-ink and watercolor sketches enliven the pages, with one beautiful watercolor painting of Mount Meru opening across the center spread. They reflect perfectly the activity and motion described in the poems, from people on safari to a “so-old man on a so-old bike” to a boy being chased by a free-roaming zoo lion. They even show the camels that were recently introduced to the Masai in Tanzania to help make their lives easier.
A list defining the Swahili words (with pronunciations) and a bare-bones map of the country complete this compelling package. (Poetry/picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: March 30, 2000
ISBN: 0-688-13157-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000
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by Sheila Hamanaka ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1994
This heavily earnest celebration of multi-ethnicity combines full-bleed paintings of smiling children, viewed through a golden haze dancing, playing, planting seedlings, and the like, with a hyperbolic, disconnected text—``Dark as leopard spots, light as sand,/Children buzz with laughter that kisses our land...''— printed in wavy lines. Literal-minded readers may have trouble with the author's premise, that ``Children come in all the colors of the earth and sky and sea'' (green? blue?), and most of the children here, though of diverse and mixed racial ancestry, wear shorts and T-shirts and seem to be about the same age. Hamanaka has chosen a worthy theme, but she develops it without the humor or imagination that animates her Screen of Frogs (1993). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-11131-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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by Larry La Prise & Charles P. Macak & Taftt Baker & illustrated by Sheila Hamanaka
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by Bob Odenkirk ; illustrated by Erin Odenkirk ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 10, 2023
A lackluster collection of verse enlivened by a few bright spots.
Poems on various topics by the actor/screenwriter and his kids.
In collaboration with his now-grown children—particularly daughter Erin, who adds gently humorous vignettes and spot art to each entry—Bob Odenkirk, best known for his roles in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, dishes up a poetic hodgepodge that is notably loose jointed in the meter and rhyme departments. The story also too often veers from child-friendly subjects (bedtime-delaying tactics, sympathy for a dog with the zoomies) to writerly whines (“The be-all and end-all of perfection in scribbling, / no matter and no mind to any critical quibbling”). Some of the less-than-compelling lines describe how a “plane ride is an irony / with a strange and wondrous duplicity.” A few gems are buried in the bunch, however, like the comforting words offered to a bedroom monster and a frightened invisible friend, not to mention an invitation from little Willy Whimble, who lives in a tuna can but has a heart as “big as can be. / Come inside, / stay for dinner. / I’ll roast us a pea!” They’re hard to find, though. Notwithstanding nods to Calef Brown, Shel Silverstein, and other gifted wordsmiths in the acknowledgments, the wordplay in general is as artificial as much of the writing: “I scratched, then I scrutched / and skrappled away, / scritching my itch with great / pan-a-ché…” Human figures are light-skinned throughout.
A lackluster collection of verse enlivened by a few bright spots. (Poetry. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9780316438506
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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