Unfortunately, the artwork isn’t enough to save this book from itself
A reluctant young king escapes the confines of the palace to experience life in the surrounding city.
The boy delights in watching his subjects as they stroll through gardens and run to catch trains. He has his first taste of salt-and-vinegar chips. After a few days of wandering, penniless and sleeping in the rough, he decides to return home. But a man offers him some advice: “You grow up and become a man when you begin to put other people before yourself.” With that, the young king renames himself John, volunteers at a soup kitchen, and searches for meaning in his life. But what’s truly revealed in this second book of a trilogy that began with The Invisible Kingdom (2016) is that Ryan is far more accomplished as a visual artist than as a writer. The large-format book is gorgeously designed and illustrated with a mixture of the cut paper and screen printing that the British artist is known for. But the overlong text meanders through a meaningless plot cluttered with inane platitudes: “I never realised that life could feel as sweet as this”; “What a world!” Readers might be excused for skipping the text altogether just to thumb through the pages of matte-finished, heavy stock paper to appreciate the subtle coloring and shifting perspectives that capture city life. The king and other humans are depicted as silhouette cutouts, giving few clues to race or ethnicity, but his hair is straight.
Unfortunately, the artwork isn’t enough to save this book from itself . (Illustrated fiction. 13 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-56656-063-4
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Crocodile/Interlink
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
The sudden death of her twin leaves a teenager struggling with grief and her fragile sense of self in this absorbing, inwardly focused import from Sweden, part fiction, part memoir. So close are the sisters that after Cilla is killed by a motorist Tina can still hear her voice, still see her just by looking in a mirror, still hold conversations; she even finds herself taking on some of Cilla’s character traits, seeking an inner balance that she has lost. Able to describe her experiences only by switching back and forth between third person and first, Tina observes the different ways those around her grieve, and finds temporary solace in many places: reading and writing poetry, performing on stage, playing her violin, trying a brief but intense fling at summer camp, even talking to a perceptive psychologist—but unlike many such stories, there is never any sense here that the authors are running through a catalog of coping strategies, or offering trite platitudes. A year later, Tina discovers that, in forming new friendships and moving on in life, she has passed the worst of her pain, and found ways to distance herself from Cilla without losing her completely. In a smooth, natural-sounding translation, this is a thoughtful, complex reminiscence. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: March 23, 1999
ISBN: 91-29-63935-2
Page Count: 247
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
Carrick (Melanie, 1996, etc.) sensitively explores the pain of a parent’s death through the eyes, feelings, and voice of a nine-year-old boy whose world turns upside down when his father becomes terminally ill with cancer. Through a fictional reminiscence, the story explores many of the issues common to children whose parents are ill—loss of control, changes in physical appearance and mental ability, upsets in daily routine, experiences of guilt and anger, the reaction of friends, and, most of all, a fear of the unknown. Although the book suffers from a pat ending and the black-and-white sketches emphasize the bleakness of the topic, this title is a notch above pure bibliotherapy and will fill a special niche for children struggling to deal with the trauma of parental sickness and death. (Fiction. 7-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-84151-8
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
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