Good for niche markets only.
An old Zen Buddhist tale retold for tots.
Two boys play in a schoolyard on a beautiful day. An older girl interrupts their games by ranting and raving about losing an earring while doing nothing to find it. One boy immediately starts looking for the missing jewelry and gets dirty in his search. The other boy watches and frowns. When the helpful boy finds the earring, the girl snatches it and runs off with nary a thank you. The boys start to play again, but the boy who didn’t participate in the search is too upset to have fun. The boy who found the earring tells his friend that it’s a sunny day, and they should be enjoying themselves. He points out that the girl and her earring are long gone and asks, “Why are you still there?” Namibar’s second Little Zen for Little Ones tale is a good-enough modernization of the legend of Japanese monks Tanzen and Ekido that counsels against holding on to past slights. However, it is hobbled by nameless characters and stagy, flat computer illustrations that resemble paper cutouts. The children look like button-eyed bobbleheads superimposed on realistic watercolor backgrounds. Jon J Muth’s retelling of the tale in Zen Shorts (2005) is vastly superior.
Good for niche markets only. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9838243-2-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Umiya Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
An entertaining, if light, addition to the growing shelf of celebrity-authored picture books.
Actor and author Witherspoon makes her picture-book debut.
Betty, a light-skinned, bespectacled child with blond pigtails, was born busy. Constantly in motion, Betty builds big block towers, cartwheels around the house (underfoot, of course), and plays with the family’s “fantabulous” dog, Frank, who is stinky and dirty. That leads to a big, busy, bright idea that, predictably, caroms toward calamity yet drags along enough hilarity to be entertaining. With a little help from best friend Mae (light-skinned with dark hair), the catastrophe turns into a lucrative dog-washing business. Busy Betty is once again ready to rush off to the next big thing. Yan uses vivid, pastel colors for a spread of a group of diverse kids bringing their dogs to be washed, helping out, and having fun, while the grown-ups are muted and relegated to the background. Extreme angles in several of the illustrations effectively convey a sense of perpetual motion and heighten the story’s tension, drawing readers in. An especially effective, glitter-strewn spread portrays Frank looming large and seemingly running off the page while Betty looks on, stricken at the ensuing mess. Though it’s a familiar and easily resolved story, Witherspoon’s rollicking text never holds back, replete with amusing phrases such as “sweet cinnamon biscuits,” “bouncing biscuits,” and “busted biscuits.” As Betty says, “Being busy is a great way to be.” Young readers are sure to agree. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An entertaining, if light, addition to the growing shelf of celebrity-authored picture books. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-46588-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Flamingo Books
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Mixed-race children certainly deserve mirror books, but they also deserve excellent text and illustrations. This one misses...
This tan-skinned, freckle-faced narrator extols her own virtues while describing the challenges of being of mixed race.
Protagonist Lilly appears on the cover, and her voluminous curly, twirly hair fills the image. Throughout the rhyming narrative, accompanied by cartoonish digital illustrations, Lilly brags on her dark skin (that isn’t very), “frizzy, wild” hair, eyebrows, intellect, and more. Her five friends present black, Asian, white (one blonde, one redheaded), and brown (this last uses a wheelchair). This array smacks of tokenism, since the protagonist focuses only on self-promotion, leaving no room for the friends’ character development. Lilly describes how hurtful racial microaggressions can be by recalling questions others ask her like “What are you?” She remains resilient and says that even though her skin and hair make her different, “the way that I look / Is not all I’m about.” But she spends so much time talking about her appearance that this may be hard for readers to believe. The rhyming verse that conveys her self-celebration is often clumsy and forced, resulting in a poorly written, plotless story for which the internal illustrations fall far short of the quality of the cover image.
Mixed-race children certainly deserve mirror books, but they also deserve excellent text and illustrations. This one misses the mark on both counts. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63233-170-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Eifrig
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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