Save your dollars for other bee books, other princess books, other books.
Princesses reintroduce honeybees to a place that needs them.
While this sequel to Princesses Wear Pants (2017) is sure to generate buzz due to author Guthrie’s celebrity, it’s every bit as lackluster as its predecessor. Stilted, forced rhyme tells a convoluted tale of Princess Penelope Pineapple’s efforts to bring honeybees to Princess Sabrina Strawberry’s kingdom (the former girl is depicted as white, the latter as black). The text never explains how the Strawberry Kingdom lost its pollinators, and the story presents the crisis as limited to a gardening problem (how will they make smoothies?), while the solution to the smoothie catastrophe is merely a matter of moving some of Penelope’s bees there. A multiracial cast of princesses descends and concocts a perfume of sorts to lure the bees, whose numbers are oddly small in the digital illustrations. Once they successfully pollinate the flora, a year passes and the princesses have a tea party with fruit pies. Throughout, Byrne’s uninspired digital illustrations vary little in their visual perspective, resulting in a dull presentation of the redundant visual narrative. To make this poor book even worse, the bland three-paragraph backmatter note about the current crisis in the honeybee population offers little substance and no resources beyond advice to “ask your teacher or a local librarian to direct you to some books or online resources about honeybees.”
Save your dollars for other bee books, other princess books, other books. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3171-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Share this feel-good title with those who love art and those who can appreciate the confidence-building triumph of solving a...
Reynolds returns to a favorite topic—creative self-expression—with characteristic skill in a companion title to The Dot (2003) and Ish (2004).
Marisol is “an artist through and through. So when her teacher told her class they were going to paint a mural…, Marisol couldn’t wait to begin.” As each classmate claims a part of the picture to paint, Marisol declares she will “paint the sky.” But she soon discovers there is no blue paint and wonders what she will do without the vital color. Up to this point, the author uses color sparingly—to accent a poster or painting of Marisol’s or to highlight the paint jars on a desk. During her bus ride home, Marisol wonders what to do and stares out the window. The next spread reveals a vibrant departure from the gray tones of the previous pages. Reds, oranges, lemon yellows and golds streak across the sunset sky. Marisol notices the sky continuing to change in a rainbow of colors…except blue. After awakening from a colorful dream to a gray rainy day, Marisol smiles. With a fervent mixing of paints, she creates a beautiful swirling sky that she describes as “sky color.” Fans of Reynolds will enjoy the succinct language enhanced by illustrations in pen, ink, watercolor, gouache and tea.
Share this feel-good title with those who love art and those who can appreciate the confidence-building triumph of solving a problem on one’s own—creatively. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-2345-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Unlikely—but the simple story and bright pictures underscore the importance of taking care of our ocean.
When a reef fish becomes stuck in a plastic bottle, a caring human child not only rescues her, but also organizes an ocean cleanup.
Like many humans, Alba, an orange fish with white spots, loves to collect interesting and beautiful objects. As she grows bigger and older, she finds more trash and fewer treasures in her neighborhood—and her reef-dwelling friends disappear. Still searching for treasures, she swims into a bottle to retrieve a pearl inside and becomes trapped. The bottle washes up on shore, where Kaia, also a collector of treasures and shown with long black hair and dark skin, comes to the rescue. Placing the fish temporarily in a bucket, she convinces her whole town to help clean “the mess that they had made.” Hawthorne’s stylized, posterlike illustrations initially show a bright, lively reef full of identifiable fish, coral, and other sea creatures. (A spread at the end introduces some of the other inhabitants, an opportunity for seek-and-find activities.) As the trash increases, the fish vanish. Near the end, a spread shows the windmill-powered town, cleaners on the beach, and even divers removing trash, making possible the busy reef scene that greets Alba’s safe return. First published in England as Alba, the Hundred Year Old Fish, this hopeful fable may help very young readers think about the problem of plastic waste.
Unlikely—but the simple story and bright pictures underscore the importance of taking care of our ocean. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1044-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Big Picture/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
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