An imaginative, leisurely paced tale.
A young physician learns a valuable lesson about emotional care.
Dr. Astrid, a blue-haired white girl in a yellow lab coat, tends to her Magical Beasts and makes sure they’re always in the best of spirits. One day a sky calf (a substantial-looking young bovine with yellow wings) flies in through her window and stands there, gazing at the young physician with a worried expression. Dr. Astrid asks what’s wrong, but the sky calf doesn’t hint to any illness. Dr. Astrid checks the sky calf’s temperature and heartbeat. She then uses her handy sticky tape to fix the problem, but the sky calf doesn’t respond to the treatment. Instead of trying to treat the sky calf physically, Dr. Astrid decides to spend time with the sky calf: playing games, coloring, and just keeping the calf company. The ensuing picture book is a pleasant ode to the understated delight of just spending time with a friend. The illustrations are drawn with thick scratchy lines and colored with broad strokes; Astrid is the white of the paper. The style evokes the hand-drawn art many little ones bring home from school to put upon the fridge. The book’s pace is calmly measured, best read on a lazy sunny day—the kind when readers might find sky calves flying through their own windows.
An imaginative, leisurely paced tale. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-78628-354-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Child's Play
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
A funny David-versus-Goliath story with a one-word question serving as the slingshot. (Picture book. 3-5)
Doctor X-Ray, a megalomaniac with an X-ray blaster and an indestructible battle suit, crashes through the ceiling of the local mall.
Innocent patrons scatter to safety. But one curious child gazes directly at the bully and asks: “Why?” At first, Doctor X-Ray answers with all the menace and swagger of a supervillain. The curious child, armed with only a stuffed bear and clad in a bright red dress, is not satisfied with the answers and continues asking: “Why?” As his pale cheeks flush with emotion, Doctor X-Ray peels back the onion of his interior life, unearthing powerful reasons behind his pursuit of tyranny. This all sounds heavy, but the humorously monotonous questions coupled with free-wheeling illustrations by Keane set a quick pace with comical results. At 60 pages, the book has room to follow this thread back to the diabolical bully’s childhood. Most of the answers go beyond a child’s understanding—parental entertainment between the howl of the monosyllabic chorus. It is the digital artwork, which is reminiscent of Quentin Blake’s, that creates a joyful undercurrent of rebellion with bold and loose brush strokes, patches of color, and expressive faces. The illustrations harken to a previous era save for the thoroughly liberated Asian child speaking truth to power.
A funny David-versus-Goliath story with a one-word question serving as the slingshot. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4521-6863-0
Page Count: 60
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sweet.
A caregiving bear shares with its cub how love has defined their relationship from the first moment and through the years as the cub has grown.
With rhymes and a steady rhythm that are less singsong-y than similar books, Stansbie seems to have hit a sweet spot for this offering on the I-love-you-always shelf. Readers follow the adult and child as they share special moments together—a sunset, a splash in a pond, climbing a tree, a snuggle—and the adult tells the child that the love it feels has only grown. Stansbie also takes care not to put promises in the adult bear’s mouth that can’t be delivered, acknowledging that physical proximity is not always possible: “Wherever you are, / even when we’re apart… // I’ll love you forever / with all of my heart.” The large trim size helps the sweet illustrations shine; their emphasis is on the close relationship between parent and child. Shaped peekaboo windows offer glimpses of preceding and succeeding pages, images and text carefully placed to work whatever the context. While the die cuts on the interior pages will not hold up to rough handling, they do add whimsy and delight to the book as a whole: “And now that you’re bigger, / you make my heart sing. / My / beautiful / wonderful / magical / thing.” Those last three adjectives are positioned in leaf-shaped cutouts, the turn of the page revealing the roly-poly cub in a pile of leaves, three formed by the die-cuts. Opposite, three vignettes show the cub appreciating the “beautiful,” the “wonderful,” and the “magical.”
Sweet. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68412-910-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Silver Dolphin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
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