The illustrations of this imaginative modern myth compensate for its flaws.
An anxious fisherman’s daughter and a mischievous monkey fill the sky with stars.
At the beginning of time, only the sun and the moon light the world. The fisherman’s daughter loves the light, not only because of the way it feels on her skin, but also because it safely guides her father home every night. On nights when the moon is absent, though, the fisherman’s daughter weeps until her father returns. Noticing the girl’s distress, the sun throws the girl a ray of light, which shatters into millions of tiny, glimmering pieces that the sun calls stars. Delighted, she starts making careful patterns in the sky, but eventually, she grows tired and overwhelmed. She lets down her guard just long enough for a mischievous monkey to steal her sack of stars—and to create the universe we know today. The luscious, intricately detailed illustrations are rendered in an unearthly palette of blacks, blues, and golds, perfect for the mood and content of the story. The protagonist is a feisty and resourceful girl of color. Unfortunately, the design and the prose are not equal to the pictures. While the story is clever and imaginative, the prose can be clumsy, particularly when it slips into passive voice. The indigo type is small, making it difficult to distinguish from the black background and detracting from the attractiveness of the artwork.
The illustrations of this imaginative modern myth compensate for its flaws. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: March 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-84976-663-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tate/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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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