Kids will appreciate Lucas’ need to read and imagine and also understand the message that there is more than one way to fly.
A picture-book homage to reading.
From his earliest days Lucas is determined to fly. The little white boy spends hours watching birds and airplanes when he’s not trying to make wings for himself—they never work. Every year on his birthday he makes the same wish with no results—until the year his mother puts a book in his hands. “There are other ways to fly, Lucas.” And he’s hooked. Before he knows it, he’s finished all the books in the house, all of the books friends give him, and vans full of books from the library. His sky-high stack of books grows higher and higher, and he becomes famous. People come from all over to see the highest mountain of books in the world. Then one day, all of a sudden, Lucas understands what his mother meant! Even though he can’t fly, his imagination can. The airy illustrations are whimsical, capturing the sensation of flying in softly colored double spreads. Subtle details add to the drollness: a birthday crown made of newsprint and Scotch tape, his sister picking her nose, underwear briefs hanging on a clothesline, a gorilla climbing the pile of books à la King Kong, and a gray cat popping in and out of the scenes.
Kids will appreciate Lucas’ need to read and imagine and also understand the message that there is more than one way to fly. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4413-1999-9
Page Count: 42
Publisher: Peter Pauper Press
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
A sweet, if oft-told, story.
A plush toy rabbit bonds with a boy and watches him grow into adulthood.
The boy receives the blue bunny for his birthday and immediately becomes attached to it. Unbeknownst to him, the ungendered bunny is sentient; it engages in dialogue with fellow toys, giving readers insight into its thoughts. The bunny's goal is to have grand adventures when the boy grows up and no longer needs its company. The boy spends many years playing imaginatively with the bunny, holding it close during both joyous and sorrowful times and taking it along on family trips. As a young man, he marries, starts a family, and hands over the beloved toy to his toddler-aged child in a crib. The bunny's epiphany—that he does not need to wait for great adventures since all his dreams have already come true in the boy's company—is explicitly stated in the lengthy text, which is in many ways similar to The Velveteen Rabbit (1922). The illustrations, which look hand-painted but were digitally created, are moderately sentimental with an impressionistic dreaminess (one illustration even includes a bunny-shaped cloud in the sky) and a warm glow throughout. The depiction of a teenage male openly displaying his emotions—hugging his beloved childhood toy for example—is refreshing. All human characters present as White expect for one of the boy’s friends who is Black.
A sweet, if oft-told, story. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72825-448-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Transitioning readers will feel accomplished and will surely look for future volumes to see what happens in Mia’s new life.
In this first volume of a new chapter-book series, a little girl named Mia discovers she’s a superhero.
Mia Macarooney is “a total disaster machine.” Everywhere she goes, chaos and mayhem follow (literally, in the case of Chaos—that’s the name of her cat). Except now she’s received an unusual letter, inviting her to the Program for In Training Superheroes, and she is totally bowled over. It turns out her accidents are often results of her superpowers, which she will learn to hone in her after-school hours at the PITS. As if that weren’t enough of a shock, Mia’s parents deliver the thrilling news that they are superheroes too! Her father is fluent in animal speech, and her mother can fly. Everything moves quickly at the PITS. Mia embarrasses herself in front of everyone during the entrance exam but ends up feeling supported and ready to learn…in the next volume. Freckled, brown-skinned, curly-fro–sporting Mia is an adorable protagonist. An overuse of exclamation points keeps the adrenaline running without a steady stream of exciting events—or even a climax and resolution—but with the large, bold type and the cute illustrations full of personality, emerging readers will be happy to read this book independently. What’s more exciting than that?
Transitioning readers will feel accomplished and will surely look for future volumes to see what happens in Mia’s new life. (Fantasy. 5-8)Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3270-3
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
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