A collection of beautiful images and engaging ideas that never coheres.
A small, hard-to-define work that falls somewhere between a picture book, a poetry collection, and an art portfolio.
On the cover of Ross and Usova’s (Teapots and Assorted Things, 2015) latest work, a multicolored fish with a human face, clad in red boots, promises a whimsical, fantastical journey. Inside, the whimsy and fantasy are indeed plentiful. Each two-page spread presents a unique concept with Ross’ stripped-down text on the left and Usova’s intricate, watercolor-and-ink illustrations on the right. Many of Ross’ one- or two-sentence ideas, presented in their entirety, would make wonderful first lines of longer poems or stories, such as the opener: “A long time ago, / we had a home in the sky.” The accompanying painting of a child on top of a house, surrounded by birds, will make readers to want to know more about that home. Turning the page, however, switches gears; an image of a different child, observed by a pair of owls, drops a red pacifier outside of a crib, and the text reads: “Gravity is fun. / It works every time.” Subsequent pages introduce other unrelated characters and concepts, such as “Drucilla’s new town was different,” or a fish “with a village on her back.” The images often hint at a story that isn’t conveyed in the text; for instance, an illustration of a charming, three-headed dragon is associated with the lines, “Let’s go here. / No, let’s go there. / No, let’s go everywhere.” Some longer segments could be considered complete poems with rhythm and rhyme that evoke Dr. Seuss or Shel Silverstein, such as “The flying horses / neigh and dance and play. / I hope they stay.” But despite the combined images of children in a hot air balloon, surrounded by white, winged horses, the delightful idea in the text is never fully fleshed out. The rest of this poem consists of “Mom” saying that “tomorrow is another day / and more good things / will come our way.” This frustrating lack of development throughout the book prevents readers from fully inhabiting its imaginative worlds.
A collection of beautiful images and engaging ideas that never coheres.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 26
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
Korman’s trademark humor makes this an appealing read.
Will a bully always be a bully?
That’s the question eighth-grade football captain Chase Ambrose has to answer for himself after a fall from his roof leaves him with no memory of who and what he was. When he returns to Hiawassee Middle School, everything and everyone is new. The football players can hardly wait for him to come back to lead the team. Two, Bear Bratsky and Aaron Hakimian, seem to be special friends, but he’s not sure what they share. Other classmates seem fearful; he doesn’t know why. Temporarily barred from football because of his concussion, he finds a new home in the video club and, over time, develops a new reputation. He shoots videos with former bullying target Brendan Espinoza and even with Shoshanna Weber, who’d hated him passionately for persecuting her twin brother, Joel. Chase voluntarily continues visiting the nursing home where he’d been ordered to do community service before his fall, making a special friend of a decorated Korean War veteran. As his memories slowly return and he begins to piece together his former life, he’s appalled. His crimes were worse than bullying. Will he become that kind of person again? Set in the present day and told in the alternating voices of Chase and several classmates, this finding-your-middle-school-identity story explores provocative territory. Aside from naming conventions, the book subscribes to the white default.
Korman’s trademark humor makes this an appealing read. (Fiction. 9-14)Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-338-05377-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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