Tender, if a bit unwieldy from being so heavily back-loaded with background facts.
Stranded on a broken-off ice floe, a polar bear plunges to the rescue when her cub slips off the edge into the sea.
With cold almost tangibly radiating from expanses of ice and dim, hazy skies, even the frisky cub, rolling and tumbling in the feathery March snow, brings barely a hint of warmth to Minor’s frozen Arctic seascapes. Meanwhile his mother stands at the edge of the ice and searches the choppy waters for an unwary seal—until with a “CRACK!” both bears suddenly find themselves floating away from safety on a fragment of ice so small that the cub loses his footing. Before he can drown, his mother dives in after and, bearing him on her back, paddles back to shore, where the two nuzzle affectionately and then wearily pad off toward their unseen den. The disquisitions on climate change and on polar bear behavior, diet, and life cycles that Burleigh tacks on afterward are well meant but seem likewise laborious; younger audiences are likely to respond more to the displays of elemental connection between parent and offspring that infuse the episode and its illustrations.
Tender, if a bit unwieldy from being so heavily back-loaded with background facts. (author’s and artist notes, resource lists) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781419760709
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Though told by two outsiders to the culture, this timely and well-crafted story will educate readers on the preciousness of...
An international story tackles a serious global issue with Reynolds’ characteristic visual whimsy.
Gie Gie—aka Princess Gie Gie—lives with her parents in Burkina Faso. In her kingdom under “the African sky, so wild and so close,” she can tame wild dogs with her song and make grass sway, but despite grand attempts, she can neither bring the water closer to home nor make it clean. French words such as “maintenant!” (now!) and “maman” (mother) and local color like the karite tree and shea nuts place the story in a French-speaking African country. Every morning, Gie Gie and her mother perch rings of cloth and large clay pots on their heads and walk miles to the nearest well to fetch murky, brown water. The story is inspired by model Georgie Badiel, who founded the Georgie Badiel Foundation to make clean water accessible to West Africans. The details in Reynolds’ expressive illustrations highlight the beauty of the West African landscape and of Princess Gie Gie, with her cornrowed and beaded hair, but will also help readers understand that everyone needs clean water—from the children of Burkina Faso to the children of Flint, Michigan.
Though told by two outsiders to the culture, this timely and well-crafted story will educate readers on the preciousness of potable water. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-17258-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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