A fine addition to the expanding body of picture books about Afro hair.
An affirmation of Afro hair that speaks to Black girls all over the African diaspora.
In this South African story, brown-skinned Wanda, who has a huge crown of natural Afro hair, feels embarrassed and panicked whenever she rides the school bus because Thula and Sizwe call her “Miss Bush” on account of her hair. Each morning, Wanda’s mama combs her hair into a halo and declares Wanda a queen and her hair a crown. But when Wanda gets to school, she transforms her hairdo into puffballs or other styles so that her teacher, who only appears in silhouette but is presumably White, will not label her hair a “bird’s nest” or say she is inappropriately dressed for this school, where students wear uniforms. With the help of her makhulu (grandmother), who wears beautiful gray twists and shows Wanda photos of famous Black women wearing diverse hairstyles, Wanda gains a greater appreciation of her hair. Makhulu gives her a new style that her classmates admire. With a bright color palette of yellow, pink, blue, aqua, and green, this story highlights Wanda’s positive female relationships and role models and helps her understand who she is in a broader cultural context. This story also addresses the systemic racism rooted in apartheid that lingers today in South African schools.
A fine addition to the expanding body of picture books about Afro hair. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-62371-864-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Crocodile/Interlink
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
From curds to riches, from meltdown to uplift—this multicourse romp delivers.
A winning wheel of cheddar with braggadocio to match narrates a tale of comeuppance and redemption.
From humble beginnings among kitchen curds living “quiet lives of pasteurization,” the Big Cheese longs to be the best and builds success and renown based on proven skills and dependable results: “I stuck to the things I was good at.” When newcomer Wedge moves to the village of Curds-on-Whey, the Cheese’s star status wobbles and falls. Turns out that quiet, modest Wedge is also multitalented. At the annual Cheese-cathlon, Wedge bests six-time winner Cheese in every event, from the footrace and chess to hat making and bread buttering. A disappointed Cheese throws a full-blown tantrum before arriving at a moment of truth: Self-calming, conscious breathing permits deep relief that losing—even badly—does not result in disaster. A debrief with Wedge “that wasn’t all about me” leads to further realizations: Losing builds empathy for others; obsession with winning obscures “the joy of participating.” The chastened cheddar learns to reserve bragging for lifting up friends, because anyone can be the Big Cheese. More didactic and less pun-rich than previous entries in the Food Group series, this outing nevertheless couples a cheerful refrain with pithy life lessons that hit home. Oswald’s detailed, comical illustrations continue to provide laughs, including a spot with Cheese onstage doing a “CHED” talk.
From curds to riches, from meltdown to uplift—this multicourse romp delivers. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063329508
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In a crowded subgenre, this offering is unnecessary.
Anger at a sibling gets taken out on a friend.
Protagonist Keya fumes when younger brother Nate gives Keya’s cereal to the dog and cuts holes in Keya’s favorite hat. Keya stomps outside. Hooper, Keya’s friend, offers a cheerful greeting, but Keya darts away. A fantasy race ensues, briefly cathartic, but Keya’s temper explodes after a knee-scraping tumble. Keya bursts out, “I don’t like you, Hooper.” It’s not true, of course, and they make up after a sweetly responsible apology. Aside from twice waxing poetic (“The kind of mad that starts / and swells / and spreads like a rash”), Adelman’s prose is dull and declarative (“Then we joked and laughed. I was so happy”). Keya and her family present white and Hooper, black. Keya’s glorious, lively black curls are de la Prada’s best visual. Many illustrations are too uniformly saturated, with the composition offering no clear place to focus. A “gold medal like sunshine” that Keya wins in the imagined race is barely visible. In a critical misstep for a book for fostering emotional literacy, narrator Keya says Hooper looks “way past mad”—echoing an earlier description of Keya—while the illustrations clearly show him as hurt, not angry. Choose Tameka Fryer Brown and Shane Evans’ My Cold Plum Lemon Pie Bluesy Mood (2013) or Judith Viorst and Ray Cruz’s classic Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (1972) instead.
In a crowded subgenre, this offering is unnecessary. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8075-8685-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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