The book effectively suggests that the term “rat race” may no longer be applicable to urban job life, but its audience is...
A hip-looking white duck with a bandanna and blue ankle boots tries to find a job he will enjoy.
Duck looks for a city job despite the dull-seeming descriptions he reads in the job ads. After snagging an interview, his next task is to assemble his interview suit: a black hat and an attaché case. After small mishaps on the way, he is interviewed by a faceless white man (Mr. Boss) and gets the position. In his cubicle, surrounded by white humans, he is bored into slumber by spreadsheets. Leaving that job, he decides to become an artist. (Is this autobiographical?) This time, a black woman, wearing jeans and the same blue ankle boots as Duck, interviews him. He finally finds his niche at Creative Magazine and happily commutes, via skateboard! The text is short, in keeping with early-elementary attention spans, though the theme seems better suited to millennials than little kids. The posterlike mixed-media illustrations are droll, but the limited palette, relying on blues, browns, white, and black, likewise has a very mature look. Visual jokes add interest (inclusion of ducks in famous paintings is amusing), but the adults sharing this with children seem to be the appropriate audience. Still, the important message here is that the creative life is a great choice.
The book effectively suggests that the term “rat race” may no longer be applicable to urban job life, but its audience is uncertain. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9896-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Templar/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
A straightforward tale of conflict and reconciliation for newly emergent readers? Not exactly, which raises it above the...
In this deceptively spare, very beginning reader, a girl assembles a robot and then treats it like a slave until it goes on strike.
Having put the robot together from a jumble of loose parts, the budding engineer issues an increasingly peremptory series of rhymed orders— “Throw, Bot. / Row, Bot”—that turn from playful activities like chasing bubbles in the yard to tasks like hoeing the garden, mowing the lawn and towing her around in a wagon. Jung crafts a robot with riveted edges, big googly eyes and a smile that turns down in stages to a scowl as the work is piled on. At last, the exhausted robot plops itself down, then in response to its tormentor’s angry “Don’t say no, Bot!” stomps off in a huff. In one to four spacious, sequential panels per spread, Jung develops both the plotline and the emotional conflict using smoothly modeled cartoon figures against monochromatic or minimally detailed backgrounds. The child’s commands, confined in small dialogue balloons, are rhymed until her repentant “Come on home, Bot” breaks the pattern but leads to a more equitable division of labor at the end.
A straightforward tale of conflict and reconciliation for newly emergent readers? Not exactly, which raises it above the rest. (Easy reader. 4-6)Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-87083-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
An unfortunately simplistic delivery of a well-intentioned message.
Drawing on lyrics from her Mormon children’s hymn of the same title, Pearson explores diversity and acceptance in a more secular context.
Addressing people of varying ages, races, origins, and abilities in forced rhymes that omit the original version’s references to Jesus, various speakers describe how they—unlike “some people”—will “show [their] love for” their fellow humans. “If you don’t talk as most people do / some people talk and laugh at you,” a child tells a tongue-tied classmate. “But I won’t! / I won’t! / I’ll talk with you / and giggle too. / That’s how I’ll show my love for you.” Unfortunately, many speakers’ actions feel vague and rather patronizing even as they aim to include and reassure. “I know you bring such interesting things,” a wheelchair user says, welcoming a family “born far, far away” who arrives at the airport; the adults wear Islamic clothing. As pink- and brown-skinned worshipers join a solitary brown-skinned person who somehow “[doesn’t] pray as some people pray” on a church pew, a smiling, pink-skinned worshiper’s declaration that “we’re all, I see, one family” raises echoes of the problematic assertion, “I don’t see color.” The speakers’ exclamations of “But I won’t!” after noting others’ prejudiced behavior reads more as self-congratulation than promise of inclusion. Sanders’ geometric, doll-like human figures are cheery but stiff, and the text’s bold, uppercase typeface switches jarringly to cursive for the refrain, “That’s how I’ll show my love for you.” Characters’ complexions include paper-white, yellow, pink, and brown.
An unfortunately simplistic delivery of a well-intentioned message. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4236-5395-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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