Children will be delighted by the full-color photographs of many different tugboats—``the best-known and best-loved workboats of the water''—in this work from Maass (When Winter Comes, 1993, etc.). It's an eye-opening introduction to these naval workhorses with spreads of tugs hauling cargo, pushing barges, and breaking ice. Numerous shots of crews working on deck, tending the engine, and cooking dinner add a human dimension, albeit an exclusively male one. Still, Maass's explanation of such terms as headline, wheelhouse, and docking pilot should make preschoolers feel as salty as Popeye, and eager to hoist anchor. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8050-3116-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A quiet, thought-provoking story of environmental change and the power humans have to slow it.
A multigenerational tale of a boat’s life with a Black family, written by two brothers who loved similar boats.
In the opening spread, a smiling, brown-skinned adult dangles a line from the back of a green-and-white boat while a boy peers eagerly over the side at the sea life. The text never describes years passing, but each page turn reveals the boy’s aging, more urban development on the shore, increasing water pollution, marine-life changes (sea jellies abound on one page), and shifting water levels. Eventually, the boy, now a teenager, steers the boat, and as an adult, he fishes alone but must go farther and farther out to sea to make his catch. One day, the man loses his way, capsizes in a storm, and washes up on a small bay island, with the overturned, sunken boat just offshore. Now a “new sailor” cleans up the land and water with others’ help. The physical similarities between the shipwrecked sailor and the “new sailor” suggest that this is not a new person but one whose near-death experience has led to an epiphany that changes his relationship to water. As the decaying boat becomes a new marine habitat, the sailor teaches the next generation (a child with hair in two Afro puffs) to fish. Focusing primarily on the sea, the book’s earth-toned illustrations, created with hundreds of stamps, carry the compelling plot.
A quiet, thought-provoking story of environmental change and the power humans have to slow it. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-324-00517-9
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Clever fun, swooshing with motion and energy, this latest in the series will keep readers racing their engines for more.
Another in Scieszka’s Trucktown series, this one features a boisterous truck race from A to Z.
“C is for Construction, Curbs and Cones and Crashes! / D is for Dan Dump Truck, who Dumps his Dirt then Dashes!” While not all letters feature such density of alliteration, Scieszka manages to pack quite a lot in. He also takes advantage of the world he’s built to upend some conventions. In many alphabet books, the text observes, Q often stands for “quiet,” but “[i]n Trucktown Q means ‘quite’ ”—as in “QUITE LOUD!” The one letter that seems off track is X: “Look out—X! A Xylophone? No one knows just why scary Big Rig has one.” Since silliness is the name of Scieszka’s game here, that’s OK. Z is for Izzy the ice cream truck, who wins the race. The digital illustrations comically animate each truck with google-eyed faces, expressions and appropriate characteristics: Big Rig sports a scowl, two hornlike exhaust pipes and a fearsome grille (he can play the xylophone all day if he wants); Wrecking Crane Rosie has a pink wrecking ball and an amiable expression. They really rev up the action. The droves of truck fans will love identifying the individual trucks as they race and cheer at the ending.
Clever fun, swooshing with motion and energy, this latest in the series will keep readers racing their engines for more. (Alphabet picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4169-4136-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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