Laced with humor and, despite its minimalistic air, decipherable in more ways than one.
Even apex predators need help with their shoes sometimes.
Brannen plays a sly joke with readers’ expectations. Wandering over broad, flat Arctic scenes, a polar bear in four red sneakers, one untied, gingerly approaches in turn a herd of seals, a drove of Arctic hares, and a colony of lemmings. Understandably, all flee in panic before the bear can get out much more than “Excuse me….” On the other hand, the situation is evidently familiar to two ptarmigans who waddle up. “Shoelaces again?” “Yup.” The birds bend down—but rather than retie the loose shoe, they untie the other three. Off gambols the barefoot bear: “Thank you!” “He really needs to learn to do that himself,” remarks one. The author tells the tale in dialogue so spare that several spreads remain wordless, brushing a sometimes-deceptive sense of serenity over events by filling skies, seas, ice fields, and the big, simply drawn animal figures with subtle flushes of transparent color. Expressions are comically anthropomorphic throughout. Leaving audiences the option to read the story as metaphorical or as just a comically surreal episode, she not only makes no effort to explain the shoes, but actually trots in a likewise-shod second bear at the end. (Go figure: Maybe there was a sale.)
Laced with humor and, despite its minimalistic air, decipherable in more ways than one. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-51650-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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