A strong read-aloud introduction to dealing with frustrations.
A girl sees love all around her in this book about dealing with disappointment and finding gratitude by mental health clinician Ali.
Luna is very excited to go to the park and meet her friends so they can all play with her new rainbow ball. But when she arrives, her pals want to finish playing with a scooter. Before they finish, a thunderstorm sends everyone home. Luna is upset, but with help from her mom—and readers, whom she asks for assistance—she focuses on the love all around her instead of her disappointment and realizes she can share it with others. Ali’s previous works, including The Self-Love Workbook for Teens (2020), are aimed at older audiences, but this distillation of coping skills in picture-book form will work well for preschoolers or kindergarteners. Luna’s style of addressing readers directly will be familiar to young viewers of fourth-wall–breaking cartoon shows, such as Dora the Explorer; the text density and advanced vocabulary (frustrated, supportive) make this most appropriate for shared reading. The calming technique known as “bubble breathing” is particularly well described, although the other family members’ constantly even tempers feel a bit unrealistic. Oliveira’s cheerful, full-color cartoon illustrations, featuring a cast of varying skin tones, rely on shapes more than linework, and their layering gives them a mixed-media feel.
A strong read-aloud introduction to dealing with frustrations.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64604-192-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloom Books for Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Sweet.
A caregiving bear shares with its cub how love has defined their relationship from the first moment and through the years as the cub has grown.
With rhymes and a steady rhythm that are less singsong-y than similar books, Stansbie seems to have hit a sweet spot for this offering on the I-love-you-always shelf. Readers follow the adult and child as they share special moments together—a sunset, a splash in a pond, climbing a tree, a snuggle—and the adult tells the child that the love it feels has only grown. Stansbie also takes care not to put promises in the adult bear’s mouth that can’t be delivered, acknowledging that physical proximity is not always possible: “Wherever you are, / even when we’re apart… // I’ll love you forever / with all of my heart.” The large trim size helps the sweet illustrations shine; their emphasis is on the close relationship between parent and child. Shaped peekaboo windows offer glimpses of preceding and succeeding pages, images and text carefully placed to work whatever the context. While the die cuts on the interior pages will not hold up to rough handling, they do add whimsy and delight to the book as a whole: “And now that you’re bigger, / you make my heart sing. / My / beautiful / wonderful / magical / thing.” Those last three adjectives are positioned in leaf-shaped cutouts, the turn of the page revealing the roly-poly cub in a pile of leaves, three formed by the die-cuts. Opposite, three vignettes show the cub appreciating the “beautiful,” the “wonderful,” and the “magical.”
Sweet. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68412-910-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Silver Dolphin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If Black Lives Matter, they deserve more specificity than this.
A lushly illustrated picture book with a troubling message.
Little Lala walks with her father after his successful day of fishing. When Mama calls her home for bed, a host of “good night”s delays her: to the bird, the monkey, and even the rock. As Lala wanders through her village in the darkening twilight, readers appreciate its expansive beauty and Lala’s simple joys. Although it’s been artfully written and richly illustrated by an award-winning author of many multicultural stories, this book has problems that overshadow its beauty. “African veld” sets the story in southern Africa, but its vague locale encourages Americans to think that distinctions among African countries don’t matter. Lala wears braids or locks that stick straight up, recalling the 19th-century pickaninny, and her inconsistent skin color ranges from deep ebony like her father’s to light brown. Shadows may cause some of these differences, but if it weren’t for her identifiable hair, readers might wonder if the same child wanders from page to page. Perhaps most striking of all is Lala’s bedtime story: not an African tale but an American classic. While this might evoke nostalgia in some readers, it also suggests that southern Africa has no comparably great bedtime books for Lala, perhaps in part because American children’s literature dominates the world market.
If Black Lives Matter, they deserve more specificity than this. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-17384-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
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