Deftly persuasive.
A fearsome dragon endangers the kingdom, the fate of which rests in the hands of the boy called…Boy.
High above the village sits the castle, where the powerful king has many brave knights to serve him. Nevertheless, the mountains nearby have been ravaged by a fire-breathing purple dragon. In the village on the edge of the burned forest lives Boy, with his mother and father. Boy cannot hear; he speaks “with dancing hands” and draws pictures in the sand. Nearby, the king and the dragon fight seemingly endless, unresolved battles, terrifying all the villagers. One day, intent on catching a small, green lizard, Boy runs right into the middle of the battle. The dragon and the king and his knights all yell at Boy to “MOVE!” But Boy doesn’t hear them. When he finally looks up, he sees several stunned faces, including the dragon’s. He tries to communicate in sign, then writes a message in the sand: “WHY ARE YOU FIGHTING?” After an awkward silence, the battling parties blame one another, then stop to explain, chat, and at last reconcile. The villagers thank Boy “with dancing hands” (represented and interpreted in the illustrations as a sign-language “thank you”). Cummings’ fable rolls out with poetic economy, heightened by Devries’ spacious page design. His medieval-Europe–ish setting has a few quirks (cacti?), but it’s mostly generic, down to the all-white human population.
Deftly persuasive. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: March 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61067-739-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Skip it
This book wants to be feminist.
Princess Penelope Pineapple, illustrated as a white girl with dark hair and eyes, is the Amelia Bloomer of the Pineapple Kingdom. She has dresses, but she prefers to wear pants as she engages in myriad activities ranging from yoga to gardening, from piloting a plane to hosting a science fair. When it’s time for the Pineapple Ball, she imagines wearing a sparkly pants outfit, but she worries about Grand Lady Busyboots’ disapproval: “ ‘Pants have no place on a lady!’ she’d say. / ‘That’s how it has been, and that’s how it shall stay.’ ” In a moment of seeming dissonance between the text and art, Penny seems to resolve to wear pants, but then she shows up to the ball in a gown. This apparent contradiction is resolved when the family cat, Miss Fussywiggles, falls from the castle into the moat and Princess Penelope saves her—after stripping off her gown to reveal pink, flowered swimming trunks and a matching top. Impressed, Grand Lady Busyboots resolves that princesses can henceforth wear whatever they wish. While seeing a princess as savior rather than damsel in distress may still seem novel, it seems a stretch to cast pants-wearing as a broadly contested contemporary American feminist issue. Guthrie and Oppenheim’s unimaginative, singsong rhyme is matched in subtlety by Byrne’s bright illustrations.
Skip it . (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2603-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Though this celebration of community is joyful, there just is not much here.
A sugary poem, very loosely based on the familiar song, lacks focus.
Using only the refrain from the original (“One love, one heart, let’s get together and feel all right!”), the reggae great’s daughter Cedella Marley sees this song as her “happy song” and adapts it for children. However, the adaptation robs it of life. After the opening lines, readers familiar with the original song (or the tourism advertisement for Jamaica) will be humming along only to be stopped by the bland lines that follow: “One love, what the flower gives the bee.” and then “One love, what Mother Earth gives the tree.” Brantley-Newton’s sunny illustrations perfectly reflect the saccharine quality of the text. Starting at the beginning of the day, readers see a little girl first in bed, under a photograph of Bob Marley, the sun streaming into her room, a bird at the window. Each spread is completely redundant—when the text is about family love, the illustration actually shows little hearts floating from her parents to the little girl. An image of a diverse group getting ready to plant a community garden, walking on top of a river accompanies the words “One love, like the river runs to the sea.”
Though this celebration of community is joyful, there just is not much here. (afterword) (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4521-0224-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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