Self-worth is always worth bolstering, but the positive message here is clouded by muddled subtexts and visual cues.
Dark-skinned children are more likely to be confused than comforted by this unvarnished esteem-builder.
Looking sheepish and unhappy in the pictures but sounding angry, a young boy cites teasing comments from lighter-skinned peers about his skin color, hair and other features. “I squirmed and wiggled / as they giggled at my teeth so white. / ‘You can be our flashlight at night. / Just smile and we’ll be alright.’ ” The emotional skies clear, though, after his mother supplies both a pep talk (“Look in the mirror and / love what you see!”) and a plate of chocolate cupcakes to share with his erstwhile tormentors. Evans, too, sends a mixed message in the ways he portrays the figures he poses against sketchy urban backdrops. Opposite the line about the narrator’s “flashlight,” the boy’s teeth are both hardly visible (in contrast to the whites of his big, bright eyes) and colored a lower-contrast ivory to boot, and in several scenes his mouth is so inconspicuous and oddly placed that his nose might be mistaken for smiling lips. More troubling, to judge from their postures and expressions, the other children’s mockery may come across to readers as just friendly banter—particularly in light of a final scene that is all frosting-smeared happy faces and mutual amity—instead of the hurtful words the narrator perceives.
Self-worth is always worth bolstering, but the positive message here is clouded by muddled subtexts and visual cues. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-60326-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
An accessible early reader for the holiday shelf.
A Thanksgiving-themed text for new readers features illustrations of a grateful child in a multiracial family.
The unnamed narrator, a child of color with brown skin and wavy, dark hair, awakens and is thankful there’s no school that day. The narrator’s happy to pitch in when Pops, an elder who uses a cane and has gray hair and lighter skin, asks for help in the kitchen. They join the child’s mother in making pies, and then they visit the child’s father at his job as a firefighter (the former has lighter skin like Pops’, the latter shares the narrator’s coloring). Throughout, the child gives thanks—expressing gratitude “that Pops lives with us” and “for what my dad and his crew do to keep us safe.” After participating in the town’s turkey-trot road race, they return home to greet diverse extended family (cousins, aunts, uncles, and Great-Gran), who join them for a shared meal, watching football on TV, and, once the weather clears up, playing football outside. With its consistent affirmations and digital art that visually echoes the text, the book is rooted in the “positive power” its series title extols. This doesn’t lead to action-packed storytelling but could spark conversations about gratitude and Thanksgiving, depicted as a modern family celebration without any reference to its history in Colonial America. Series companion I Am Kind publishes simultaneously.
An accessible early reader for the holiday shelf. (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62336-920-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Rodale Kids
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it.
A guide to better behavior—at home, on the playground, in class, and in the library.
Serving as a sort of overview for the series’ 12 previous exercises in behavior modeling, this latest outing opens with a set of badly behaving dinos, identified in an endpaper key and also inconspicuously in situ. Per series formula, these are paired to leading questions like “Does she spit out her broccoli onto the floor? / Does he shout ‘I hate meat loaf!’ while slamming the door?” (Choruses of “NO!” from young audiences are welcome.) Midway through, the tone changes (“No, dinosaurs don’t”), and good examples follow to the tune of positive declarative sentences: “They wipe up the tables and vacuum the floors. / They share all the books and they never slam doors,” etc. Teague’s customary, humongous prehistoric crew, all depicted in exact detail and with wildly flashy coloration, fill both their spreads and their human-scale scenes as their human parents—no same-sex couples but some are racially mixed, and in one the man’s the cook—join a similarly diverse set of sibs and other children in either disapprobation or approving smiles. All in all, it’s a well-tested mix of oblique and prescriptive approaches to proper behavior as well as a lighthearted way to play up the use of “please,” “thank you,” and even “I’ll help when you’re hurt.”
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-36334-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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