An absorbing and approachable introduction to the struggles of refugees.
A debut nonfiction picture book focuses on a young refugee and her family.
Nasteha is an Ethiopian girl who tells her Oromo family’s story in this work for elementary school readers. Bigots in her country targeted the Oromo. As Beardsley writes in Nasteha’s voice: “When the Oromo people were in danger of being killed, my mother and father fled Ethiopia.” This happened before Nasteha was born. The family moved to the Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya, but only Nasteha’s siblings and pregnant mother were allowed to stay because her father did not have the right paperwork. The camp was a dangerous place, without enough food or water to go around. Eventually, the girl’s family was approved to move to Canada. But when Nasteha was born at the medical facility, she was not on the list to travel with her family. Her mother left her behind with an aunt, and finally, Nasteha was brought to Canada to be reunited with her loved ones. Beardsley’s recounting of these events, using Nasteha’s voice, makes the girl’s story feel relatable and urgent. The technique allows the author to gloss over some of the scarier aspects of the account, making the difficulties evident to young readers without terrifying them. The narrative invites readers to identify with Nasteha and to see the problems faced by refugees. Wood’s photographs of Nasteha and her family make up most of the images. A short, useful glossary defines unfamiliar terms.
An absorbing and approachable introduction to the struggles of refugees.Pub Date: April 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5255-6679-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An educational and uplifting foundation in financial mindsets and rules of thumb.
A walking, talking billfold of cash takes readers through the ins and outs of money.
Held together by a shiny gold clip and often accompanied by anthropomorphic coins, our narrator is a smiley, positive presence who eats pizza and rides a bike, just like us! Money explains its value as well as how to earn it (mowing lawns, selling lemonade), spend it, save it, and share it. The narrator uses clothing as a metaphor to explain different forms of money—sometimes the narrator dons “digital and crypto clothes,” though the author doesn’t elaborate on these. A similar reference to “credit card coats” is accompanied by a warning on overspending. Most commendable are reminders of readers' self-worth: Though readers are encouraged to invest in themselves, it’s made abundantly clear that money does not confer value to people. A message about earning interest is followed by a wordless page of coins and bills passing by a bank and a credit union—concepts that are a bit too advanced to describe in detail for this book’s audience. For now, tracking savings in a clear jar (not a piggy bank) is advanced enough. A guinea pig appears throughout the cheerful, textured art, making a suitably cute sidekick for the narrator.
An educational and uplifting foundation in financial mindsets and rules of thumb. (money tips) (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781728271262
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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