A little thin but the lovely art rewards lingerers.
A four-season round, observed in stylized scenes and 20 haiku-like poems.
Pappa is loose with her syllable count but otherwise follows the form’s conventional antecedents as she reflects on a young child’s outdoor encounters and activities: “Beautiful day! / Teach me, too, how to fly, / mother swallow.” Appealing though the spare and precise poetry may be, younger audiences will likely be more strongly drawn by the serene, harmonious pictures. As in her eye-catching illustrations for Roxane Marie Galliez’s Thank You, Miyuki (2020), Ratanavanh sets an Asian-presenting protagonist with pink cheeks against likewise stylized, mostly natural, flat backdrops constructed using delicately transparent hues and bright Japanese washi patterns. A paper boat and a flight of origami “wild geese” add further atmospheric notes. Though the child climbs a ladder in one scene to color in a rainbow and in another hangs little dolls in a Christmas tree, in general they are small enough to peer from a poppy at an equally tiny spring lamb, sit on a dahlia with a pair of “happy snails” in autumn, and, in one droll summer scene, make a lazy comment about the grasshopper on the nose of a mountainous, napping dog—oblivious to the comparatively giant butterfly perched on their own.
A little thin but the lovely art rewards lingerers. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-951836-14-6
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Cameron + Company
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
A lackluster collection of verse enlivened by a few bright spots.
Poems on various topics by the actor/screenwriter and his kids.
In collaboration with his now-grown children—particularly daughter Erin, who adds gently humorous vignettes and spot art to each entry—Bob Odenkirk, best known for his roles in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, dishes up a poetic hodgepodge that is notably loose jointed in the meter and rhyme departments. The story also too often veers from child-friendly subjects (bedtime-delaying tactics, sympathy for a dog with the zoomies) to writerly whines (“The be-all and end-all of perfection in scribbling, / no matter and no mind to any critical quibbling”). Some of the less-than-compelling lines describe how a “plane ride is an irony / with a strange and wondrous duplicity.” A few gems are buried in the bunch, however, like the comforting words offered to a bedroom monster and a frightened invisible friend, not to mention an invitation from little Willy Whimble, who lives in a tuna can but has a heart as “big as can be. / Come inside, / stay for dinner. / I’ll roast us a pea!” They’re hard to find, though. Notwithstanding nods to Calef Brown, Shel Silverstein, and other gifted wordsmiths in the acknowledgments, the wordplay in general is as artificial as much of the writing: “I scratched, then I scrutched / and skrappled away, / scritching my itch with great / pan-a-ché…” Human figures are light-skinned throughout.
A lackluster collection of verse enlivened by a few bright spots. (Poetry. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9780316438506
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent.
Wouldn’t the same housecat look very different to a dog and a mouse, a bee and a flea, a fox, a goldfish, or a skunk?
The differences are certainly vast in Wenzel’s often melodramatic scenes. Benign and strokable beneath the hand of a light-skinned child (visible only from the waist down), the brindled cat is transformed to an ugly, skinny slinker in a suspicious dog’s view. In a fox’s eyes it looks like delectably chubby prey but looms, a terrifying monster, over a cowering mouse. It seems a field of colored dots to a bee; jagged vibrations to an earthworm; a hairy thicket to a flea. “Yes,” runs the terse commentary’s refrain, “they all saw the cat.” Words in italics and in capital letters in nearly every line give said commentary a deliberate cadence and pacing: “The cat walked through the world, / with its whiskers, ears, and paws… // and the fish saw A CAT.” Along with inviting more reflective viewers to ruminate about perception and subjectivity, the cat’s perambulations offer elemental visual delights in the art’s extreme and sudden shifts in color, texture, and mood from one page or page turn to the next.
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4521-5013-0
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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