The art will draw and hold young children’s attention, but the words hang together better when sung rather than spoken.
Lyrics inspired by an exchange with Marley’s 3-year-old daughter are set to bright paintings of a multicultural cast of children and adults enjoying each other’s company indoors and out.
The Emmy-winning song is already available on recordings and as an app, and it’s better suited to those formats. Here, without the music, the experience is primarily visual, since the lyrics are largely repetitions of the chorus—“I love you, I love you too. / I tell you, I love you”—interspersed with variations on “Like the fish loves the sea. // Like the honey and the bee” or “When you smile, I’ll smile along. / When you cry, my comfort comes.” Reflecting both the imagery and the warm intimacy of adjacent lines, three children and their parents (babies, grandparents and others put in cameos) in various combinations play together, sit at meals, observe birds and smiling worms, decorate a holiday tree or simply embrace lovingly in Jatkowska’s illustrations. A note on Marley’s charitable organization, Unlimited Resources Giving Enlightenment, follows the text.
The art will draw and hold young children’s attention, but the words hang together better when sung rather than spoken. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: April 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61775-310-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A visually striking, engaging picture book that sends the message that everyone counts.
A playful counting book also acts as a celebration of family and human diversity.
Shannon’s text is delivered in spare, rhythmic, lilting verse that begins with one and counts up to 10 as it presents different groupings of things and people in individual families, always emphasizing the unitary nature of each combination. “One is six. One line of laundry. One butterfly’s legs. One family.” Gomez’s richly colored pictures clarify and expand on all that the text lists: For “six,” a picture showing six members of a multigenerational family of color includes a line of laundry with six items hanging from it outside of their windows, as well as the painting of a six-legged butterfly that a child in the family is creating. While text never directs the art to depict diverse individuals and family constellations, Gomez does just this in her illustrations. Interracial families are included, as are depictions of men with their arms around each other, and a Sikh man wearing a turban. This inclusive spirit supports the text’s culminating assertion that “One is one and everyone. One earth. One world. One family.”
A visually striking, engaging picture book that sends the message that everyone counts. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-374-30003-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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