Just right for both first-time visitors as well as fans of the city.
Noted artist Thurlby applies his creative sense of design to an alphabet of New York City.
Readers will be immediately struck by the artist’s distinctive style, which uses mixed media and digital techniques to represent the famous sights of the Big Apple. The flat dimensions and striking use of color fashion vintage-poster–like depictions for each iconic image. The marked diversity of the people depicted is anything but vintage, happily. From the American Museum of Natural History to the Bronx Zoo, none of the selected letter pairings, each represented on a double-page spread, is a stretch, which happens too often in themed ABC books. D for “Downtown Manhattan” illustrates Chinatown; the Empire State Building and “ice skating” at Rockefeller Center require 90-degree rotations for full appreciation; N is the New York Public Library; Q is for Queens; V is for “the Village”; X is for the “New York Stock EXchange”; and Y for Yankee Stadium, of course. Best of all is a Where’s Waldo–esque device in which King Kong himself appears in every scene, sometimes large or sometimes teeny. Sharp eyes will detect him in the crowd at Grand Central, enjoying the view of the Brooklyn Bridge, piloting a plane at JFK, and jogging Uptown outside the Guggenheim Museum. Naturally, he has his own page for the letter K.
Just right for both first-time visitors as well as fans of the city. (Picture book. 5-10)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-5465-0
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A good overview of this complex, essential organ, with an energetic seasoning of silliness.
An introduction to the lead guitar and vocalist for the Brainiacs—the human brain.
The brain (familiar to readers of Seluk’s “The Awkward Yeti” webcomic, which spun off the adult title Heart and Brain, 2015) looks like a dodgeball with arms and legs—pinkish, sturdy, and roundish, with a pair of square-framed spectacles bestowing an air of importance and hipness. Other organs of the body—tongue, lungs, stomach, muscle, and heart—are featured as members of the brain’s rock band (the verso of the dust jacket is a poster of the band). Seluk’s breezy, conversational prose and brightly colored, boldly outlined cartoon illustrations deliver basic information. The brain’s role in keeping the heart beating and other automatic functions, directing body movements, interpreting sights and sounds, remembering smells and tastes, and regulating sleep and hunger are all explained, prose augmented by dialogue balloons and information sidebars. Seluk points out, importantly, that feelings originate in the brain: “You can control how you react…but your feelings happen no matter what.” The parodied album covers on the front endpapers (including the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Green Day, Run DMC, Queen, Nirvana) will amuse parents—or at least grandparents—and the rear endpapers serve up band members’ clever social media and texting screenshots. Backmatter includes a glossary and further brain trivia but no resources or bibliography.
A good overview of this complex, essential organ, with an energetic seasoning of silliness. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-16700-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A mixed bag.
An alphabetical tour of emotions.
This British import mixes words that many young kids will know, such as brave, kind, and mad (the last defined in the American sense, as angry), with less-familiar ones such as overwhelmed and vulnerable. It even features at least one word that may be new to adults: “X is for Xenial….Xenial is being welcoming to strangers.” Compounding the difficulty here, the visual image of a Black kid dressed as a magician hugging a rabbit they’ve pulled out of a hat does not exactly illustrate xeniality (xenialness?). Other illustrations do a better job of helping readers understand the words being introduced. The illustrations feature racially diverse children and are usually paired in each double-page spread: “A is for Anxious. Anxious is feeling really worried about something. / B is for Brave. Brave is being nervous about something and doing it anyway.” On the A page, a brown-skinned kid cowers from the dragon that encircles their bed, as in a nightmare. Across the gutter on the B page, the ferociously scowling child confronts the now-intimidated monster. Kids will get an immediate sense of those two words. Animals, real and imaginary, often play a role in the pictures. The book will be best shared one on one or in very small groups, when children can really spend time examining the pictures and talking about their own impression of what is happening in each picture. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A mixed bag. (word list) (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-20519-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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