Inspired by Mother Goose but looking to cultural traditions closer to her own, Nigeria-born Unobagha offers dozens of original short rhymes incorporating West African sights, sounds, wildlife, and customs. “ ‘Kokori Kokori / Coconut Boy, / Give me some milk / And I’ll dance in joy.’ / ‘A cowrie, a cowrie, / Is all you need; / Give me a cowrie / And dance indeed.’ ” Most of the figures in Cairns’s village or country scenes are dancing, colorfully dressed children with very dark skin, silhouetted vividly against light backgrounds. A mix of illustration, some full-page, others double with borders, still others small, framed vignettes add to the pleasing design. The verses are light and fresh, a pleasure to read alone or aloud—and despite the author’s avowed intention to inform or remind readers of African themes and mores, they are not weighed down by pedantry: “Mama hold my little hand / Mama hold my little hand / Mama hold my little hand / As I skip across the sand.” Glossary. (Poetry. 5-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-8118-2378-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
This heavily earnest celebration of multi-ethnicity combines full-bleed paintings of smiling children, viewed through a golden haze dancing, playing, planting seedlings, and the like, with a hyperbolic, disconnected text—``Dark as leopard spots, light as sand,/Children buzz with laughter that kisses our land...''— printed in wavy lines. Literal-minded readers may have trouble with the author's premise, that ``Children come in all the colors of the earth and sky and sea'' (green? blue?), and most of the children here, though of diverse and mixed racial ancestry, wear shorts and T-shirts and seem to be about the same age. Hamanaka has chosen a worthy theme, but she develops it without the humor or imagination that animates her Screen of Frogs (1993). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-11131-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
Echoing Ashley Wolff’s 1988 approach to Stevenson’s poetic tribute to the power of imagination, Kirk begins with neatly drawn scenes of a child in a playroom, assembling large wooden blocks into, “A kirk and a mill and a palace beside, / And a harbor as well where my vessels may ride.” All of these acquire grand architectural details and toy-like inhabitants as the pages turn, until at last the narrator declares, “Now I have done with it, down let it go!” In a final twist, the young city-builder is shown running outside, into a well-kept residential neighborhood in which all the houses except his have been transformed into piles of blocks. Not much to choose between the two interpretations, but it’s a poem that every child should have an opportunity to know. (Picture book/poetry. 5-7)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-689-86964-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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