A brightly colored celebration of individuality that unfortunately falls flat.
A quirky woman spreads joy and optimism wherever she goes in Exelbierd’s illustrated children’s book.
Rayna Rose, known to those around her for always wearing two different colored shoes, spends her days celebrating the differences that make her—and everyone else—unique. Always looking on the bright side, Rayna Rose doesn’t let things like traffic get her down. Instead, she gets out of her car and dances while waiting for a bridge to come down, or starts impromptu games with other cars at red lights: “Do you know how to play rock, paper, scissors shoe? / That’s Rayna Rose’s favorite thing to do! Games, Sports, / and even high fives mean the same in every language.” Readers follow Rayna Rose as she runs errands, rollerblades by the ocean, and gets her nails done. Through it all, she maintains a healthy sense of confidence and encourages others to do the same. Fraser’s illustrations are outlined in bold black lines with bright colors and minimal shading. The style is highly cartoonish (people only have four fingers on each hand, for example) and exudes the same joy that Rayna Rose clearly radiates. While the book relays the important theme of embracing what makes us different, there are plenty of typos and random capitalizations to distract from that message. The story is told in verse, and the rhyme scheme is haphazard at best, with some lines not making much sense at all. The narrator mentions Tennessee for no other reason than to make a rhyme, for example, when it’s been established that Rayna Rose lives near the ocean: “She needs to get her nails done for her speech. / She goes to see her friend Tony, he is Vietnamese. / She says, ‘Tony, let’s make my nails pretty for Tennessee!’” All of this ultimately results in a book with an uplifting moral that is conveyed in a disappointingly muddled way.
A brightly colored celebration of individuality that unfortunately falls flat.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees.
After Duncan finds his crayons gone—yet again—letters arrive, detailing their adventures in friendship.
Eleven crayons send missives from their chosen spots throughout Duncan’s home (and one from his classroom). Red enjoys the thrill of extinguishing “pretend fires” with Duncan’s toy firetruck. White, so often dismissed as invisible, finds a new calling subbing in for the missing queen on the black-and-white chessboard. “Now everyone ALWAYS SEES ME!…(Well, half the time!)” Pink’s living the dream as a pastry chef helming the Breezy Bake Oven, “baking everything from little cupcakes…to…OTHER little cupcakes!” Teal, who’s hitched a ride to school in Duncan’s backpack, meets the crayons in the boy’s desk and writes, “Guess what? I HAVE A TWIN! How come you never told me?” Duncan wants to see his crayons and “meet their new friends.” A culminating dinner party assembles the crayons and their many guests: a table tennis ball, dog biscuits, a well-loved teddy bear, and more. The premise—personified crayons, away and back again—is well-trammeled territory by now, after over a dozen books and spinoffs, and Jeffers once more delivers his signature cartooning and hand-lettering. Though the pages lack the laugh-out-loud sight gags and side-splittingly funny asides of previous outings, readers—especially fans of the crayons’ previous outings—will enjoy checking in on their pals.
Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780593622360
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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