The vivid richness and fine visual detail will bring young readers back again and again.
Fishes, feathers, birds, bugs, vegetables, fruits, and flowers populate this homage to seven colors.
This French import begins with red, as spectrums often do. A handful of floating dots in slightly different sizes and slightly different red shades sits across from a cardinal and a red maple leaf. Next, the matte white background hosts a juicy variety of red creatures and fruits, spaced companionably across the spread: raspberries, chili pepper, pomegranate, crayfish, ladybug. Orange gets the same treatment, then yellow, blue, green, black, and white. (No purple, which is fine; no brown, which is sad.) Blue, yellow, and green vary the most in shade, value, and intensity—the blue dots range from green-blue to dark indigo, the greens from tertiary lime to dark, low-saturation spruce. While the other colors should show a wider range, every spread is gorgeous, tempting and entrancing, evoking delicious tastes and nature scents. A small heap of turmeric looks like powder on the page; the skin of a Gala apple has the exquisite lines and glinting dots of a real Gala, darkening at the apple’s curves. Subtle puckers and folds paint an orange that could be plucked off the page and peeled. A gray pebble in the “white” section (this part has the only black background, for offset) could be just dried from the beach.
The vivid richness and fine visual detail will bring young readers back again and again. (Picture book. 2-6)Pub Date: March 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64896-014-7
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Sure to appeal to budding paleontologists everywhere.
Colorful, fun, and informative guide for pint-sized dinosaur enthusiasts.
Kid-friendly and more informative than most dino books for tots, this lift-the-flap dinosaur book is a great next step for any kid with an interest in the subject. Each double-page panorama—occasionally folding out to three or even four pages wide—is organized around types of dinosaurs or habitats. While most featured dinosaurs are land dwellers, prehistoric reptiles of the sea and sky appear as well. Dinosaurs are rendered in bright colors on a white background in a childlike style that makes even Tyrannosaurus rex not too terrifying. Make no mistake, though; the king of the dinosaurs is clearly labeled “CARNIVORE.” Folding T. rex’s head back reveals a black-and-white handsaw, to which the text likens its enormous, sharp teeth. Another marginal illustration, captioned, “Watch out! T. rex is looking for its lunch,” shows a Triceratops specimen on a plate. Yet another reads, “Crushed dinosaur bones have been found in T. rex poop!” Several racially diverse kids appear in each scene, like toddler scientists variously observing, inspecting, and riding on the dinosaurs depicted. In addition to teaching the difference between herbivores and carnivores, the book also conveys a sense of the scale of these prehistoric beasts: Diplodocus is two school buses long, a Triceratops adult is the size of an elephant, and a Velociraptor is the size of a turkey, for example.
Sure to appeal to budding paleontologists everywhere. (Board book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0809-2
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Templar/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A cheery board book to reinforce the oneness of babykind.
Ten babies in 10 countries greet friends in almost 10 languages.
Countries of origin are subtly identified. For example, on the first spread, NYC is emblazoned on a blond, white baby’s hat as well as a brown baby’s scoot-car taxi. On the next spread, “Mexico City” is written on a light brown toddler’s bike. A flag in each illustration provides another hint. However, the languages are not named, so on first reading, the fine but important differences between Spanish and Portuguese are easily missed. This is also a problem on pages showing transliterated Arabic from Cairo and Afrikaans from Cape Town. Similarly, Chinese and Japanese are transliterated, without use of traditional hànzì or kanji characters. British English is treated as a separate language, though it is, after all, still English. French (spoken by 67 million people) is included, but German, Russian, and Hindi (spoken by 101 million, 145 million, and 370 million respectively) are not. English translations are included in a slightly smaller font. This world survey comes full circle, ending in San Francisco with a beige baby sleeping in an equally beige parent’s arms. The message of diversity is reinforced by images of three babies—one light brown, one medium brown, one white—in windows on the final spread.
A cheery board book to reinforce the oneness of babykind. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-938093-87-6
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Duo Press
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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