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I WANT TO BE

Name: I WANT TO BE
Author: Thylias Moss
ISBN: 0-8037-1286-3

by Thylias Moss & illustrated by Jerry Pinkney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1993

Exhilarating, verbally and visually: the very essence of youthful energy and summertime freedom.

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The untrammeled exuberance of a free-spirited youngster, eager to explore everything, sings through a poetic story.

When neighbors ask a young African-American what she'd like to be and she lacks a ready answer, she lets her imagination soar while pondering attributes she might claim ("big," "strong," "old," "fast," "wise," "beautiful," "green," "weightless") and concluding: "I want to be life doing, doing everything." The unnamed narrator, in sneakers, tie-dyed shirt and cutoff overalls, is Pinkney's latest handsome young heroine (cf. Mirandy and Brother Wind, 1988; The Talking Eggs, 1989). His watercolors burgeon with flowers, butterflies, rainbows, and busy, happy people (Brother Wind makes a cameo appearance). In Moss's headlong style, image piles on image; but Pinkney's artistic ingenuity matches even her most over-the-top similes: "a train moving in the sun like a metal peacock's glowing feather on tracks that are like stilts a thousand miles long laid down like a ladder up a flat mountain (wow!)...."

Exhilarating, verbally and visually: the very essence of youthful energy and summertime freedom. (Picture book. 5-10)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-8037-1286-3

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Dial Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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THANK YOU, MR. FALKER

by Patricia Polacco & illustrated by Patricia Polacco ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1998

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An autobiographical tribute to Polacco’s fifth-grade teacher, the first adult to recognize her learning disability and to help her learn to read. Trisha begins kindergarten with high hopes, but as the years go by she becomes convinced she is dumb. She can draw well, but is desperately frustrated by math and reading. In fifth grade, Mr. Falker silences the children who taunt Trisha, and begins, with a reading teacher, to help her after school. A thank-you to a teacher who made a difference is always welcome, but this one is unbearably sentimental. Although the perspective is supposed to be Trisha’s, many sentences give away the adult viewpoint, e.g., “She didn’t notice that Mr. Falker and Miss Plessy had tears in their eyes.” The extent to which Trisha limns her own misery and deifies Mr. Falker (complete with a classroom version of a “He who is without sin among you” scene) is mawkish. Mr. Falker’s implicit sense of fairness—“Right from the start, it didn’t seem to matter to Mr. Falker which kids were the cutest. Or the smartest. Or the best at anything”—is contradicted when Trisha is the object of praise: Mr. Falker, watching her draw, whispers, “This is brilliant . . . absolutely brilliant. Do you know how talented you are?” Polacco’s disdain for all the other teachers and the students intrudes on Trisha’s more profoundly heartbreaking perspective; the book lacks the author’s usual flair for making personal stories universal. (Picture book. 5-9)

Pub Date: May 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-399-23166-8

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Philomel

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
A SEA OF GOLD
by Patricia Polacco ; illustrated by Patricia Polacco

- BOOK REVIEW
PALACE OF BOOKS
by Patricia Polacco ; illustrated by Patricia Polacco

- BOOK REVIEW
GO ASK OZZIE
by Patricia Polacco ; illustrated by Patricia Polacco

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JUDY MOODY SAVES THE WORLD!

by Megan McDonald & illustrated by Peter Reynolds ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2002

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McDonald’s irrepressible third-grader (Judy Moody Gets Famous, 2001, etc.) takes a few false steps before hitting full stride. This time, not only has her genius little brother Stink submitted a competing entry in the Crazy Strips Band-Aid design contest, but in the wake of her science teacher’s heads-up about rainforest destruction and endangered animals, she sees every member of her family using rainforest products. It’s all more than enough to put her in a Mood, which gets her in trouble at home for letting Stink’s pet toad, Toady, go free, and at school for surreptitiously collecting all the pencils (made from rainforest cedar) in class. And to top it off, Stink’s Crazy Strips entry wins a prize, while she gets . . . a certificate. Chronicled amusingly in Reynolds’s frequent ink-and-tea drawings, Judy goes from pillar to post—but she justifies the pencil caper convincingly enough to spark a bottle drive that nets her and her classmates not only a hundred seedling trees for Costa Rica, but the coveted school Giraffe Award (given to those who stick their necks out), along with T-shirts and ice cream coupons. Judy’s growing corps of fans will crow “Rare!” right along with her. (Fiction. 8-10)