A gentle catalyst for crucial conversations about balancing digital diversions with real-life play as well as an...
Blip, a boxy little robot, loves plugging herself into her computer all day long.
Her cord connects her to a big screen that offers learning apps, blinking games, catchy music, and even pictures of lush landscapes. When a blackout and a tumble down the stairs somersault Blip out the front door, she’s suddenly in the gauzy light of the natural world. The small robot reels. Inside Blip’s house it’s dark—just stark blacks and whites. Outside, soft, spring pigments paint grassy hills, curvy tree trunks, scattered flowers, furry creatures, and a winding, sky-blue stream. Flipping back, readers might notice that Blip’s daily computer activity is depicted in vignettes that move incrementally across the page in linear rows, with square pixels assembling to generate crude computer-screen visuals. Blip’s dramatic immersion into the varied, curvy, colorful outdoors nudges readers to compare the two settings. Blip’s real-life play mirrors her virtual-play activities, except it now burbles with immediacy, spontaneity, and interactive fun with new, adorable animal friends (a wide-eyed bunny and baby-faced duck). Will Blip plug back in at the end of the day? Readers may doubt it, as they’ve decided to stay unplugged a little more themselves.
A gentle catalyst for crucial conversations about balancing digital diversions with real-life play as well as an introduction to self-guided critical thinking. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-18737-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
Like its subject: full of bustling life yet peaceful.
Life buzzes in a community garden.
Surrounded by apartment buildings, this city garden gets plenty of human attention, but the book’s stars are the plants and insects. The opening spread shows a black child in a striped shirt sitting in a top-story window; the nearby trees and garden below reveal the beginnings of greenery that signal springtime. From that high-up view, the garden looks quiet—but it’s not. “Sleepy slugs / and garden snails / leave behind their silver trails. / Frantic teams of busy ants / scramble up the stems of plants”; and “In the earth / a single seed / sits beside a millipede. / Worms and termites / dig and toil / moving through the garden soil.” Sicuro zooms in too, showing a robin taller than a half-page; later, close-ups foreground flowers, leaves, and bugs while people (children and adults, a multiracial group) are crucial but secondary, sometimes visible only as feet. Watercolor illustrations with ink and charcoal highlights create a soft, warm, horticulturally damp environment. Scale and perspective are more stylized than literal. McCanna’s superb scansion never misses, incorporating lists of insects and plants (“Lacewings, gnats, / mosquitos, spiders, / dragonflies, and water striders / live among the cattail reeds, / lily pads, and waterweeds”) with description (“Sunlight warms the morning air. / Dewdrops shimmer / here and there”). Readers see more than gardeners do, such as rabbits stealing carrots and lettuce from garden boxes.
Like its subject: full of bustling life yet peaceful. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1797-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
It’s gratifying to see Lola’s love of books leading her to new experiences.
Hoping to have a garden like the one in her poetry book, Lola plants seeds, waits and weeds, and finally celebrates with friends.
The author and illustrator of Lola Loves Stories (2010) and its companion titles take their appealing character outside. Inspired by her favorite poem, the nursery rhyme “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” (repeated on the front endpapers), Lola chooses her favorite flowers from library books. Helped by her parents, she grows a grandly diverse flower garden, just right for a celebration with peas and strawberries from the family plot. Beardshaw’s acrylic illustrations show her garden in all its stages. They also show the copper-toned preschooler reading on her mother’s lap, making a flower book, a beaded string with bells and shells, a little Mary Mary doll and cupcakes for the celebration. Her bunchy ponytails are redone, and her flower shirt is perfect for the party. Not only has she provided the setting; she makes up a story for her friends. The simple sentences of the text and charming pictures make this a good choice for reading aloud or early reading alone. On the rear endpapers, the nursery rhyme has been adapted to celebrate “Lola, Lola, Extraordinary.”
It’s gratifying to see Lola’s love of books leading her to new experiences. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-58089-694-8
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
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