Engaging and true to the message.
Chapin and Forster’s unofficial Earth Day anthem gets a picture-book treatment.
A song that once woke astronauts in space becomes a story told on double-page spreads through White’s whimsical illustrations. A brown-skinned girl with Afro-puff pigtails, a brown-haired White boy, and a white rabbit take off on a bed with a star-patterned coverlet for a dreamlike journey. Carried by a balloon, their flight begins in fantasy. They land on a mushroom planet and admire fanciful constellations. A rocket takes them into space so they can see the spinning Earth. On their return, things are even more surreal. The Earth becomes a spinning record in a landscape with a sleeping lion and dinosaurs. The rabbit rides a dinosaur and, later, helps build one out of snow. Once again carried by the balloon, they float over the river of history, which gradually becomes more dingy and acquires trash. Suddenly the “pretty planet” is a smoke-filled industrial dump. The rabbit weeps. But they set to and clean up (shown effectively in a sequence of panels). Once again, the world is “a holy place.” Appropriately for a picture-book narrative, they end up back in bed. Their room is filled with reminders of their journey. The many allusive details in the illustrations will make adults smile and keep child readers coming back for more. The song is included, scored once for keyboard or guitar and once as a round. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-18-inch double-page spreads viewed at 85.5% of actual size.)
Engaging and true to the message. (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-4532-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for...
A gentle voice and familiar pitfalls characterize this tale of a boy navigating the risky road to responsibility.
Gavin is new to his neighborhood and Carver Elementary. He likes his new friend, Richard, and has a typically contentious relationship with his older sister, Danielle. When Gavin’s desire to impress Richard sets off a disastrous chain of events, the boy struggles to evade responsibility for his actions. “After all, it isn’t his fault that Danielle’s snow globe got broken. Sure, he shouldn’t have been in her room—but then, she shouldn’t be keeping candy in her room to tempt him. Anybody would be tempted. Anybody!” opines Gavin once he learns the punishment for his crime. While Gavin has a charming Everyboy quality, and his aversion to Aunt Myrtle’s yapping little dog rings true, little about Gavin distinguishes him from other trouble-prone protagonists. He is, regrettably, forgettable. Coretta Scott King Honor winner English (Francie, 1999) is a teacher whose storytelling usually benefits from her day job. Unfortunately, the pizzazz of classroom chaos is largely absent from this series opener.
This outing lacks the sophistication of such category standards as Clementine; here’s hoping English amps things up for subsequent volumes. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-547-97044-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book.
Ada Twist’s incessant stream of questions leads to answers that help solve a neighborhood crisis.
Ada conducts experiments at home to answer questions such as, why does Mom’s coffee smell stronger than Dad’s coffee? Each answer leads to another question, another hypothesis, and another experiment, which is how she goes from collecting data on backyard birds for a citizen-science project to helping Rosie Revere figure out how to get her uncle Ned down from the sky, where his helium-filled “perilous pants” are keeping him afloat. The Questioneers—Rosie the engineer, Iggy Peck the architect, and Ada the scientist—work together, asking questions like scientists. Armed with knowledge (of molecules and air pressure, force and temperature) but more importantly, with curiosity, Ada works out a solution. Ada is a recognizable, three-dimensional girl in this delightfully silly chapter book: tirelessly curious and determined yet easily excited and still learning to express herself. If science concepts aren’t completely clear in this romp, relationships and emotions certainly are. In playful full- and half-page illustrations that break up the text, Ada is black with Afro-textured hair; Rosie and Iggy are white. A closing section on citizen science may inspire readers to get involved in science too; on the other hand, the “Ode to a Gas!” may just puzzle them. Other backmatter topics include the importance of bird study and the threat palm-oil use poses to rainforests.
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3422-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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