by Seldon Thomas Childers illustrated by Diana Buck ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 10, 2011
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In their illustrated book of children’s poetry, Childers and Buck present new takes on old parables, set to rhyme.
Using various rhyme schemes, Childers retools a selection of aged fables, sometimes hewing close to the original and other times taking his own tack. For instance, "The Emperor’s New Clothes," “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” and “The Three Pigs” are presented as direct descendants of the old chestnuts, while the story of Icarus is a more distant relative (deploying an eagle and a tortoise). Whichever approach taken, Childers’ work is clever and (often darkly) comedic. Couplets predominate—“‘Whoa!’ said Frog, ‘Ya think I’m daft? / To use my body for a raft, / and haul a cargo such as you, / one quick stick could kill us two!’”—but Childers is not bound to the form when two, three, five or more lines are needed. He also implements internal rhyme to catch the ear (“Sun said, ‘Just because you topple trees, / and freeze lost Bees below their knees, / does not make you a bloomin’ czar’”) and varies the tempo and highlights the story’s turn. The writing is brisk, never forced or overpacked, and, best of all, it’s never scolding; these may be words to the wise, important lessons that readers should always keep in the back of their minds—“many of these seemingly capricious parables contained messages, valuable recipes for surviving in society and the physical world,” says Childers in his foreword—but they are administered with a spoonful of honey rather than fish oil. Though the tales are relatively straightforward, Childers has snuck in a teaser—“There was a Tasmanian Devil, / who, when spinning, made everything level. / It’s from ambition, I fear, / he spun up his own ear, / and now that / poor Devil / is level / !”—but for each tale Childers has provided, at the end, a short rhyme that interprets the lesson in bell-clear terms. Each of these single-page tales is accompanied by a piece of Buck’s artwork—snappy color illustrations that get right to the essence of things. A jaunty lot of advice, sound as ever and told with good cheer.
Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-1460933756
Page Count: 80
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Lois Ehlert ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 21, 1988
From the artist who created last year's shoutingly vivid Growing Vegetable Soup, a companion volume about raising a flower garden. "Mom and I" plant bulbs (even rhizomes), choose seeds, buy seedlings, and altogether grow about 20 species. Unlike the vegetables, whose juxtaposed colors were almost painfully bright, the flowers make a splendidly gaudy array, first taken together and then interestingly grouped by color—the pages vary in size here so that colored strips down the right-hand side combine to make a broad rainbow. Bold, stylish, and indubitably inspired by real flowers, there is still (as with its predecessor) a link missing between these illustrations with their large, solid areas of color and the real experience of a garden. The stylized forms are almost more abstractions than representations (and why is the daisy yellow?). There is also little sense of the relative times for growing and blooming—everything seems to come almost at once. Perhaps the trouble is that Ehlert has captured all the color of the garden, but not its subtle gradations or the light, the space, the air, and the continual movement and change.
Pub Date: March 21, 1988
ISBN: 0152063048
Page Count: 66
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1988
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by Kate Messner ; illustrated by Mark Siegel ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 7, 2020
A lovely encouragement to young writers to persist.
This follow-up to How To Read a Story (2005) shows a child going through the steps of creating a story, from choosing an idea through sharing with friends.
A young black child lies in a grassy field writing in a journal, working on “Step 1 / Search for an Idea— / a shiny one.” During a walk to the library, various ideas float in colorful thought bubbles, with exclamation points: “playing soccer! / dogs!” Inside the library, less-distinct ideas, expressed as shapes and pictures, with question marks, float about as the writer collects ideas to choose from. The young writer must then choose a setting, a main character, and a problem for that protagonist. Plotting, writing with detail, and revising are described in child-friendly terms and shown visually, in the form of lists and notes on faux pieces of paper. Finally, the writer sits in the same field, in a new season, sharing the story with friends. The illustrations feature the child’s writing and drawing as well as images of imagined events from the book in progress bursting off the page. The child’s main character is an adventurous mermaid who looks just like the child, complete with afro-puff pigtails, representing an affirming message about writing oneself into the world. The child’s family, depicted as black, moves in the background of the setting, which is also populated by a multiracial cast.
A lovely encouragement to young writers to persist. (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4521-5666-8
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
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