This nondidactic story is a natural for collections about sharing, effectively softening the natural tendency toward...
A minimalistic, humorous tale about competitive bunnies, a carrot, and the notion of sharing.
During a nice morning in wintertime, two bunnies riding on a red sleigh encounter a black top hat with a carrot inside. Through a series of illustrations, they are shown shouting “Mine! Mine!” to each other while fighting over the carrot. After a vigorous action sequence in which each fights for the carrot, they lose it, and a big bunny and five little bunnies appear to add competition over the much-desired carrot. It is when a morose, noseless snowman enters this scene of covetous chaos that bunnies and young readers are challenged with the concepts of possession, sharing, and ownership. In this debut picture book, Jin tells the story with only three words: the possessive pronouns “mine,” "ours,” and “yours.” The textual simplicity results in a story that is heavily reliant on the pastel-hued acrylic illustrations, the emotions conveyed with crystalline clarity through facial expressions, page composition, and pacing.
This nondidactic story is a natural for collections about sharing, effectively softening the natural tendency toward possessiveness of most living things through its sweet illustrations. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-2772-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
It’s nothing new, but it’s also clearly heartfelt.
A love song from parents to their child.
This title will seem quite similar to the many others about parents’ deep love for their children. The text is wholly composed of first-person declarations of parental love, and it’s juxtaposed with illustrations of the child with one or both parents. It’s not always clear who the “I” speaking is, and there are a few pages that instead use “we.” Most sentences begin with “I love you more” phrasing to communicate that nothing could undermine parental love: “I love you more than all the sleepless nights…and all the early, tired mornings.” The accompanying pictures depict the child as a baby with weary parents. Later spreads show the child growing up, and the phrasing shifts away from the challenges of parenting to its joys and to attempts to quantify love: “I love you more than all the blades of grass at the park…and all the soccer that we played.” Throughout, Bell’s illustrations use pastel tones and soft visual texture to depict cozy, wholesome scenes that are largely redundant of the straightforward, warm text. They feature a brown-haired family with a mother, father, and child, who all appear to be white (though the father has skin that’s a shade darker than the others’).
It’s nothing new, but it’s also clearly heartfelt. (Picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0652-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Who knew that turning the pages could be the best part of a book?
The concept of this picture book is simple enough: 10 birds topple, slip, and dive their way off the titular twig until there is one left. The text itself echoes familiar singsong-y children’s rhymes like “Five Little Pumpkins.” While it mostly succeeds, there are some awkward spots: “5 on a twig, there used to be more… / SNAP! Don’t say a word, now there are four.” (On each page the number is both spelled out and represented as a numeral). The real scene stealer, however, is the book’s interplay between Cole’s illustrations and the physical pages themselves. In much the same way Eric Carle utilizes the pages in The Very Hungry Caterpillar to show the little critter eating its way through the week, Cole uses pages of increasing width to show how the twig grows shorter as each bird falls and marches off purposefully with the others, all headed toward verso with pieces of twig in their beaks. Stylistically, the book is captivating. The very colorful, egg-shaped birds appear on a single, thin black line on a stark white background. This backdrop stands in powerful contrast to the book’s final two pages, which are set against black negative space, a theme echoed in the book’s feather-print endpapers. The heavy, thick pages make it easy for little hands to participate. The text takes a back seat to the playful and compelling design, which is sure to delight readers.
Who knew that turning the pages could be the best part of a book? (Picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-72821-593-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
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