The long polar night will never be the same.
Mika is a young white polar bear whose imagination works double-time—particularly at bedtime.
His cousin, Vanilla (a surprising name for a black bear), comes to visit just before the longest night of the year and tries to help him work through his fears. With a trusty “torch” (a flashlight—clearly the translator was influenced by British idiom), Vanilla helps him see that the Giant Snow Monster with the gun is only a snowman with a plain old broom, and the dark shadows are not hunters with weapons but penguins with ice-fishing equipment. Two “huge snakes” (apparently this Arctic has snakes as well as penguins) turn out to be skis. A “dragon” becomes a friendly sled dog, and a spider turns out to be a black umbrella. Mika even begins to take charge when Vanilla seems to be frightened of two heads on a wall. The white bear confidently tells his cousin: “Don’t tell me you’re scared of a mirror!” Translated from the French, this is a story meant to help children work through their fears. It doesn’t quite make enough sense. Although readers are shown the objects that Mika fears, they never see the mirror that so throws Vanilla. But the bold pictures and the retro colors are fun. And just what is that red alien stuffed toy with one cyclopean eye that Mika drags everywhere?
The long polar night will never be the same. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-2-7338-4325-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Auzou Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet and unexpected addition to the waiting-for-baby shelf.
A big, yellow hound dog has small, wonderful dreams.
Emma’s dreams are doggily simple. Rendered in gray, they manifest above her contentedly slumbering form: “singing, dancing, rolling in grass, splashing in water, going for walks,” and eating. After she wakes and eats, she naps again, sprawled on her back, tummy distended, the very picture of canine bliss. Pages turn, with Cooper’s lyrical text focusing on Emma and her sensations: “The days went on, shifting and taking shape, and now there were times when her whole body felt strange, but there was no stopping the days.” A gently curving line of overlapping Emmas, rising, stretching, scratching, shifting, and resettling, underscores time’s march. Adult readers may be anxious at this point, fearing Emma’s impending death with the page turn—but no, it turns out Emma’s been literally full of wonders, and she gazes mildly at a puppy emerging from her own body. Then there they are, seven little Emmas, and they now embody her dreams. Cooper’s brushy, loose watercolors, outlined in swoops of ink, complement his Emma-focused text. She resides in a human home, but her owner appears only as tan-skinned hands extending from the margin to offer a bowl of food, caress her snout, or towel off a pup. In this way, Cooper invites readers into Emma’s interiority, allowing them to sit quietly and wonder with her.
A sweet and unexpected addition to the waiting-for-baby shelf. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781250884763
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Sweet fare for bed- or naptimes, with a light frosting of natural history.
A sonorous, soporific invitation to join woodland creatures in bedding down for the night.
As in her Moon Babies, illustrated by Amy Hevron (2019), Jameson displays a rare gift for harmonious language and rhyme. She leads off with a bear: “Come home, Big Paws. / Berry picker / Honey trickster / Shadows deepen in the glen. / Lumber back inside your den.” Continuing in the same pattern, she urges a moose (“Velvet Nose”), a deer (“Tiny Hooves”), and a succession of ever smaller creatures to find their nooks and nests as twilight deepens in Boutavant’s woodsy, autumnal scenes and snow begins to drift down. Through each of those scenes quietly walks an alert White child (accompanied by an unusually self-controlled pooch), peering through branches or over rocks at the animals in the foregrounds and sketching them in a notebook. The observer’s turn comes round at last, as a bearded parent beckons: “This way, Small Boots. / Brave trailblazer / Bright stargazer / Cabin’s toasty. Blanket’s soft. / Snuggle deep in sleeping loft.” The animals go unnamed, leaving it to younger listeners to identify each one from the pictures…if they can do so before the verses’ murmurous tempo closes their eyes.
Sweet fare for bed- or naptimes, with a light frosting of natural history. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7063-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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