There are so many human stories to tell of Hurricane María that this dog’s version feels slight.
A canine perspective on weathering a hurricane.
Maxy is a happy dog who lives in Puerto Rico with Clarita, her parents, and her abuelos. His idyllic life of playing catch under the flamboyant tree and taking naps with his toy bat is threatened one day in September, when Clarita and her family begin preparing their house and laying in supplies for Hurricane María. As the storm makes landfall, Maxy shakes with fear, but Clarita is there to comfort her puppy. When the rain stops, the world has changed for the dog, his family, and their neighbors: The power is out for days, the streets are flooded, many homes are destroyed, and trees have been torn down—including Maxy and Clarita’s favorite. Many days later the power is restored, and the refrigerators and fans start working again. Maxy is relieved! Will this ever happen again? When the rain starts falling again, Maxy starts to tremble, and his owner, quick to comfort him, shows Maxy all the reasons why rain is a good thing. Barinova’s illustrations endear the puppy’s plight to readers. But Clarita also survives the hurricane. And although it’s important to remember pets during natural disasters, Chansky and Acevedo’s bilingual story seems like a missed opportunity to center a human child of color’s experience and their survival and recovery—tales that are badly needed.
There are so many human stories to tell of Hurricane María that this dog’s version feels slight. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: May 31, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-55885-918-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arte Público
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
Like its subject: full of bustling life yet peaceful.
Life buzzes in a community garden.
Surrounded by apartment buildings, this city garden gets plenty of human attention, but the book’s stars are the plants and insects. The opening spread shows a black child in a striped shirt sitting in a top-story window; the nearby trees and garden below reveal the beginnings of greenery that signal springtime. From that high-up view, the garden looks quiet—but it’s not. “Sleepy slugs / and garden snails / leave behind their silver trails. / Frantic teams of busy ants / scramble up the stems of plants”; and “In the earth / a single seed / sits beside a millipede. / Worms and termites / dig and toil / moving through the garden soil.” Sicuro zooms in too, showing a robin taller than a half-page; later, close-ups foreground flowers, leaves, and bugs while people (children and adults, a multiracial group) are crucial but secondary, sometimes visible only as feet. Watercolor illustrations with ink and charcoal highlights create a soft, warm, horticulturally damp environment. Scale and perspective are more stylized than literal. McCanna’s superb scansion never misses, incorporating lists of insects and plants (“Lacewings, gnats, / mosquitos, spiders, / dragonflies, and water striders / live among the cattail reeds, / lily pads, and waterweeds”) with description (“Sunlight warms the morning air. / Dewdrops shimmer / here and there”). Readers see more than gardeners do, such as rabbits stealing carrots and lettuce from garden boxes.
Like its subject: full of bustling life yet peaceful. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1797-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender...
A polar-bear parent speaks poetically of love for a child.
A genderless adult and cub travel through the landscapes of an arctic year. Each of the softly rendered double-page paintings has a very different feel and color palette as the pair go through the seasons, walking through wintry ice and snow and green summer meadows, cavorting in the blue ocean, watching whales, and playing beside musk oxen. The rhymes of the four-line stanzas are not forced, as is the case too often in picture books of this type: “When cold, winter winds / blow the leaves far and wide, / You’ll cross the great icebergs / with me by your side.” On a dark, snowy night, the loving parent says: “But for now, cuddle close / while the stars softly shine. // I’ll always be yours, / and you’ll always be mine.” As the last illustration shows the pair curled up for sleep, young listeners will be lulled to sweet dreams by the calm tenor of the pictures and the words. While far from original, this timeless theme is always in demand, and the combination of delightful illustrations and poetry that scans well make this a good choice for early-childhood classrooms, public libraries, and one-on-one home read-alouds.
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender restrictions. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68010-070-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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