MacLachlan and Kellogg celebrate the small things, but the small things turn out to be the big things after all: the...
Falling snowflakes highlight the beauties and joys of winter in this celebration of the uniqueness of not only every snowflake, but every child.
MacLachlan’s lyrical free verse is set on the pages, sometimes drifting like the flakes in a storm, sometimes stacked up like so much snow on the ground. Her language is the same, at times gently flowing, at others, a staccato list, always matching the emotion: “Snowflakes / Fall / Drift / And swirl together / Like the voices of children.” Boot prints and sled tracks are not the only evidence of children in these pages, which are filled with the wonders and delights of childhood, wonderfully captured in Kellogg’s detailed and perfectly colored illustrations. They wake up to new snow, find animal tracks, catch snow on their tongues, snuggle in a cozy bed, revel in the companionship of pets, and make snowmen and snow forts and snow angels. Snowy wind at night can be scary, but in the morning, the world is new again. MacLachlan ends with a simple version of the water cycle, the snow melting and filling “the chattering streams” then “[s]ending drops of water up / To fall as rain.” And where there once was snow, there will be flowers, reminiscent of the snowflakes. No direct mention of the Sandy Hook shootings is made in this book dedicated to its victims; the emphasis is on life, not death.
MacLachlan and Kellogg celebrate the small things, but the small things turn out to be the big things after all: the children, “No two the same— / All beautiful.” (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-385-37693-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
It’s conceptually clever enough, but metatexts and reader participation are plentiful these days, and the art can’t compare...
A factory producing black-and-white items faces adjustment.
A panda, a zebra, and a bespectacled penguin—two wearing ties, one holding a clipboard—welcome readers: “You’ve just won a tour of the top-secret Black and White Factory.” By turning the page, says a tiny-font footnote, readers swear to obey the rules: no messes, no colors, no surprises. This factory makes tuxedos, eight balls, and dice; it’s even developing black-and-white–checkered paint and polka-dot paint (older readers will pause, then grin). In the Animal Room, Dalmatians get “splatched” with black; a poster reminds workers of the correct direction of zebra stripes. Unexpectedly, in the Bar Code Room, colors start appearing. The guides beg readers for help—“Use your fingers to wipe the color off the bar code!”; “Rub the colors with your sleeve. Or your elbow. Something”—but change is inevitable. Before the upheaval, Funck’s illustrations are entirely black and white (natch), with speech bubbles and savvily expressive eyebrows; however, soft edges and crowded composition belie the text’s claim that “Everything is perfectly clean. Everything has its place” and undermine the attempted visual contrast of the color surge.
It’s conceptually clever enough, but metatexts and reader participation are plentiful these days, and the art can’t compare with Hervé Tullet’s Mix It Up (2014) or Deborah Freedman’s Blue Chicken (2011). (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0277-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A well-intentioned effort from a debut author, this does not rise above the plethora of existing tales about whales—beached,...
Emma lives near the sea, where she enjoys beachcombing and playing with her dog, Nemo.
Sometimes the fair-skinned redhead thinks about “olden times,” imagining herself in a boat alongside a whaling vessel, persuading its harpooner not to harm cetaceans. At other moments, her thoughts have an environmental twist: “She liked to picture an ocean teeming with life, with no balloons or bottles spit to shore.” White’s serene watercolor-and–mixed-media compositions feature a muted palette made up primarily of greens, grays, blues, and black. Scenes of the past are rendered in mustard and brown. Stylized trees dot the seascape. The central action concerns a beached baby whale that Emma discovers during a walk. She caresses the creature, discerning its thoughts and intuiting its fears and gender. Implausibly, she doesn’t think about going for help but rather waits for the tide to come in. She then single-handedly pushes the whale into the current, sending it back to its mother. Unrealistic plot elements mix uncomfortably with the ecological messages, producing neither the playfulness of fantasy nor the accuracy of realism. The choppy prose—“At low tide, that’s when they found the best treasures”—does not enhance the package.
A well-intentioned effort from a debut author, this does not rise above the plethora of existing tales about whales—beached, biblical, or bellicose. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-553-53847-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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