This celebration of differences displays great respect for readers’ intelligence and yields more with each reading.
The amphibian in this Australian import is actually a child who likes to dress as something else because it “makes me feel brave.”
The child had tried being a cat, but good friend Camille discreetly suggested (after watching a friend run repeatedly from a dog) that a different animal might work better. DeGennaro’s introduction places the two on opposite sides of the gutter, highlighting their differences. The narrator sports one-piece pajamas, green slippers, and a green, knitted cap with two froglike bulges on top. Behind the narrator are collages of the tadpole’s life cycle. Camille, wearing her signature red polka-dot boots, is surrounded by graphs and numbers. Although the protagonist knows that when Camille recites the six times table it signals hunger, her repetition and wriggling during measurements for a matching costume are maddening; the narrator’s frustrated outburst causes her to walk off the page. These rosy-cheeked white children, created on the taupe pages with ink, pencil, and Conte crayons, exude personality—through lopsided goggles and smiles, gentle gestures, and bodies that relate to each other as if through gravitational pull. Sequential panels, thought bubbles, and backgrounds are expertly designed with mathematical symbols and frogs, enhancing comprehension of the characters’ interior worlds. The visuals surrounding their endearing embrace show how unspoken layers contribute to communication and reconciliation.
This celebration of differences displays great respect for readers’ intelligence and yields more with each reading. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-7130-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A warm, if understated, title about the struggle for equality.
A tribute to her father, Tuck’s school desegregation story highlights an African-American boy’s triumph in a typing tournament.
Mason Steele (the fictionalized version of Tuck’s father, Moses Teel Jr.) is a 14-year-old who helps his father’s civil rights group by writing letters for them. Impressed and grateful, the group presents him with a manual typewriter, which proves useful when Mason and his siblings desegregate a public school in their home state of North Carolina and encounter overt hostility and discrimination. He nevertheless excels and earns the honor of representing his school in a countywide typing tournament—a position racist administrators grant him to avoid trouble with the Board of Education after he scores highest in his typing class. The other competitors choose electric typewriters, but although he realizes that he will lose time, Mason selects a manual typewriter, later saying “[I]t reminds me of where I come from.” And he wins. The victory’s drama seems woefully understated, however, especially since Velasquez’s accompanying oil paintings never show the children typing, instead depicting moments before and after the competition. And yet, although he lacks celebration from those outside his family, Mason is proud, knowing “his words typed on paper had already spoken for him—loud and clear.”
A warm, if understated, title about the struggle for equality. (author’s note) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-60060-348-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
The titular baobab is an ancient tree in Maiko’s East African village, the site of his fondest memories of playing with...
Maiko experiences an orphan’s loneliness and an immigrant’s unease but eventually finds comfort in his new home.
The titular baobab is an ancient tree in Maiko’s East African village, the site of his fondest memories of playing with friends who didn’t say “that his ears struck straight out from his head.” After his parents die (no cause is mentioned), he goes to North America to live with his aunt and uncle. His only friend is a small spruce tree, 7 years old like Maiko, growing too close to his suburban house’s foundation. His spiritual communion with this tree is so strong that he tries to save it when his aunt and uncle want to cut it down. Watercolors with pleasantly loose ink lines show generic scenes in Africa and multicultural North America. Maiko makes friends with Li, but Leonard, another classmate, continually makes fun of his ears (which do not appear unusual in the illustrations). Maiko has experienced his first Halloween and Christmas when, without explanation, Leonard stops making fun of him. Readers might wonder, too, whether Maiko’s ability to hear the spruce’s "song" is too sweetly poetic. On his 8th birthday in spring, in a neat resolution, the family finds a perfect home for the spruce.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-897187-91-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Second Story Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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