A historical and regional tour revealed through rhyming snippets and bright acrylics welcomes the young picture-book audience to California. A turned-sideways opening spread of a map of California introduces 14 double-page spreads that lead a geographic journey from San Diego to such diverse places as Yosemite, Death Valley’s Furnace Creek and the Channel Islands. There are historic trips to Sacramento’s Capitol Dome in the time of the Pony Express; Monterey when sardines were fished and then sold on Cannery Row; and Coloma when James Marshall discovered gold. Simple couplets focus the vivid composition that’s scratched and scraped on textured wood, creating a grandiose sense of history and place. The journey’s end concludes with state facts and an expansive array of 75 bulleted items, the eclectic choices following no theme or organizational scheme other than their proximity to the visited areas in the poems. Included are lesser-known places such as Paul Ecke’s poinsettia farm close to San Diego and well-known sites as the La Brea Tar Pits along with factoids about the endangered condors and California’s motto, “Eureka.” A brilliant tickler for budding historians and travel bugs. (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-7)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-58089-116-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2007
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
Echoing Ashley Wolff’s 1988 approach to Stevenson’s poetic tribute to the power of imagination, Kirk begins with neatly drawn scenes of a child in a playroom, assembling large wooden blocks into, “A kirk and a mill and a palace beside, / And a harbor as well where my vessels may ride.” All of these acquire grand architectural details and toy-like inhabitants as the pages turn, until at last the narrator declares, “Now I have done with it, down let it go!” In a final twist, the young city-builder is shown running outside, into a well-kept residential neighborhood in which all the houses except his have been transformed into piles of blocks. Not much to choose between the two interpretations, but it’s a poem that every child should have an opportunity to know. (Picture book/poetry. 5-7)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-689-86964-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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