While the dreamlike nature of the images is fairly accessible, children (and adults) may find themselves stopped cold by...
A winner of the Lazarillo Award, the prize in Spain for children’s literature, Aliaga weaves a tale translated into English with mixed results.
Wimmer’s pictures are surreal and dreamlike: colors soft and deep; pigs with wings and pirates piloting tea cups and beds that turn into camels. Figures are stretched and elongated and change their shapes like Alice with the mushroom. The red-haired, golden-eyed child says, “Every night before I go to sleep, she sits down on my bed with heaps of stories in her hands.” "She" is a figure with endless tendrils of black hair and bright blue eyes. When the girl is on a Ferris wheel in a sweet story, she rises up in a starlit cloak to hand the child some cotton candy. For a magical story, the child’s bed is in a tree, and disembodied hands hold her, teaching her “to sing and fly.” At the end, “the night sits on my bed, with heaps of dreams in her hands,” cradling the tiny child, bed and all. The mother/storyteller/night image is lovely in pictures, but some of the language is ungraceful or obscure: “I’m always the main character,” or “in search of a mirage....”
While the dreamlike nature of the images is fairly accessible, children (and adults) may find themselves stopped cold by nonrhythmic sentence structure. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-84-15-24198-0
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Cuento de Luz
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A potential gift for fans of the contributors’ earlier work.
A text-heavy, joke-filled monograph about a dreaded bestowal.
In this meta text, an unseen narrator gripes about everything they wish they had received as a present, including a dog and a skateboard. “Now I feel like I have to read it,” the narrator grumps about their book gift. In subsequent spreads, they express their frustration. Sensitive bibliophiles beware: The narrator is ruthless in their scorn of giving books as presents. Some may tire of the message, repeated page after page in different ways: “Look, I’m a doer, not a reader,” one page reads, accompanied by an image of a muscled arm. The narrator makes references to clogging the toilet with homemade slime (“I told them it most definitely wasn’t me”)—a moment that will appeal to older kids who can grasp and revel in the humor. Human skin is shown as printer paper white, tan, and blue. Layouts are boisterous yet uncluttered, using text in various sizes, colors, and fonts. Pleasant near-pastel yellow, blue, and purple back up goofy illustrations, sure to draw interest even if the quips go over younger kids’ heads. Some elements, like the desire to receive X-ray vision as a present, will resonate widely with the target audience, though the story largely treads similar ground as Greenfield and Lowery’s I Don’t Want To Read This Book (2021). (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A potential gift for fans of the contributors’ earlier work. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-46236-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Very young gardeners will need more information, but for certain picky eaters, the suggested strategy just might work.
A young spinach hater becomes a spinach lover after she has to grow her own in a class garden.
Unable to trade away the seed packet she gets from her teacher for tomatoes, cukes or anything else more palatable, Sylvia reluctantly plants and nurtures a pot of the despised veggie then transplants it outside in early spring. By the end of school, only the plot’s lettuce, radishes and spinach are actually ready to eat (talk about a badly designed class project!)—and Sylvia, once she nerves herself to take a nibble, discovers that the stuff is “not bad.” She brings home an armful and enjoys it from then on in every dish: “And that was the summer Sylvia Spivens said yes to spinach.” Raff uses unlined brushwork to give her simple cartoon illustrations a pleasantly freehand, airy look, and though Pryor skips over the (literally, for spinach) gritty details in both the story and an afterword, she does cover gardening basics in a simple and encouraging way.
Very young gardeners will need more information, but for certain picky eaters, the suggested strategy just might work. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9836615-1-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Readers to Eaters
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2012
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