An effective and moving approach to understanding sorrow that children should understand.
A young boy who loses his treasured balloon illustrates the stages of grief in this debut picture book.
Joey has loved his yellow balloon ever since an old man at the carnival wrapped the string around his wrist. The beautifully detailed images by Madrid (Jungle Cruise, 2018, etc.) set the story in the early 20th century; day after summer day, the balloon comes with Joey on his appealingly old-fashioned adventures. At night, Joey tells the balloon: “I love you so much. I can’t wait for tomorrow.” But one day, the balloon somehow slips off his wrist, disappearing into the sky. The previously colorful images turn gray and cold to match Joey’s grief, anger, and confusion. But over time, his sadness lessens, and color gradually returns in his life. Seeing the warm yellow sun, Joey realizes that while he’ll always miss his balloon, it’s a part of him and always will be. In her book, Papageorge deftly tells a fable about grief, one that children could use to better deal with the loss of a relative or pet. The sensitive, expressive illustrations partner well with the text, especially the remarkable gatefold spread that opens up to show, when the book is turned, the yellow balloon rising impossibly high while Joey remains earthbound. The author honors a child’s feelings but also shows how they can slowly change: “As time passed,” Joey “was sad a lot of the time instead of most of the time.”
An effective and moving approach to understanding sorrow that children should understand.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9903370-0-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Minoan Moon Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A beautiful, moving mythological adventure.
In a world based on Greek mythology, a 12-year-old aspires to be a Ferryer of the dead but gets off track when she meets a Living girl who’s found her way into the Underworld.
All Senka knows is her existence on an island in the middle of the Acheron River, “smack between the realm of the Living and the realm of the Dead,” where she’s the ward of Charon, the Ferryer of souls. Her teacher is an enormous raven named Mortimer. After Senka, who presents white, learns the Rules for Ferryers, Charon agrees to her repeated requests and starts training her to become a Ferryer. But when an emergency leads to Senka’s being left alone, she disobeys Charon’s explicit orders, takes the boat out on her own—and quickly learns that ferrying souls is far more complicated than she realized. She encounters dark-haired, brown-skinned Poppy, whose “edges are crisp”—she’s a Living girl who will sacrifice anything to find Joey, her younger brother who died. As Senka tries to convince Poppy to return to the Shore of the Living, the two get stuck in the Underwild, a “lawless place where chaos reigns” that’s filled with innumerable dangers and shrouded in secrets. Senka’s lively first-person narration relates the unexpected friendship that forms through her shared adventures with Poppy as they face mortality and the unknown. Debut author Targosz offers readers a meaningful exploration of grief and its impact on those left behind.
A beautiful, moving mythological adventure. (Fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781665957632
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
