A brief but amusing escapade into underwear history.
The only thing funnier than underwear? Prehistoric underwear!!
(Bare) necessity may be the mother of invention, but that doesn’t guarantee that one gets it right the first time. It’s the Stone Age, and after chilly cave-dweller Pod informs his father that “I really do need something to keep my bottom warm,” what follows is a series of missteps on the road to success. Naturally, Pod’s father’s first suggestion is that he use stone to make himself some undies. When that leads to a near drowning, the undaunted Pod tries wood, shells, spider webs, mud, and feathers before a woolly mammoth offers up the finest solution. Plenty of visual gags abound in the cartoonish art during Pod’s misadventures, with a highly amused mammoth in the background mirroring young readers’ inevitable delight. But it is Pod’s persistence to engage in trial and error, even in the face of multiple failures, that turns this book from mere Stone Age silliness into a lesson of tackling a problem from multiple angles. Pod and his family are light-skinned, and he has a multiracial group of friends.
A brief but amusing escapade into underwear history. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-84886-311-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Maverick Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Good intentions cannot save this oddly executed ode.
Fiction and fact mix and meld in this feminist motorcycling history.
A female motorcycle with the name Jessie emblazoned on her side aims to show naysayers—and the world—just what a girl (bike) can do. Starting in 1906, the tale follows the plucky anthropomorphized vehicle as she becomes the first female bike to cross the country. She’s turned down when she tries to sign up to be a courier in World War I, joining a traveling exposition instead. An injury puts her out of commission, but Jessie’s mantra is “Fast and strong, / I won’t be slowed! / In rain or shine, I’ll forge my road” (a refrain that changes slightly over the course of the narrative). And when World War II rolls around, she’s hired to courier messages around the country. Backmatter pays homage to female motorcyclists of the past with a particularly long essay and a timeline. The book’s heart is in the right place, but the follow-through is thoroughly muddled. Is this a world where motorcycles are entirely sentient? Such internal logic breaks down entirely at times, as when Jessie declares herself the first “woman” to reach the top of Pike’s Peak. One can’t help but imagine how much stronger this story could have been had it focused on the real female bikers of the past and not a mechanical, googly-eyed stand-in. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Good intentions cannot save this oddly executed ode. (further reading) (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-5420-3422-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Two Lions
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
An attempt at a child-friendly exploration of the WWII Japanese Canadian incarceration that falls short.
Being apart from family is never easy.
Mira, a Japanese Canadian girl living in a village of gray shacks, worries when Mama says that Pa won’t join them on the child’s birthday. With a tapirlike creature named Baku—explained in the backmatter as a dream eater from Japanese folklore—Mira flies all the way to the family’s former shop and home, both abandoned and in disrepair, to locate Pa, but he’s nowhere to be found. Mira tries to play with stones gathered with Pa but discards them in unresolved anger and confusion. Simplistic, at times dry text neatly avoids the darker reason for the family’s separation. Context about the incarceration of Japanese Canadians during World War II (and how men were often sent to separate labor camps) is relegated to the lengthy author’s note, which uses the euphemistic term internment rather than incarceration. Muted illustrations depict the stones with more vibrant tones, perhaps to signify their importance in Mira’s life. Amid a drab palette, occasional bright colors—green fields and sunny yellows in flashbacks with Pa—provide some respite. Despite some warm moments with Mama, Mira suffers emotionally from Pa’s absence in a way that kids likely won’t understand; grown-ups may want to consult the appended list of references to offer background.
An attempt at a child-friendly exploration of the WWII Japanese Canadian incarceration that falls short. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781773217567
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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