Unusual and strikingly lovely black-and-white illustrations can’t save a problematic storyline.
A dog nudges her way out the door of her human’s home to investigate the night.
As Dog explores, she encounters and befriends “someone WILD,” illustrated as a wolf or perhaps a coyote. They chase a rabbit together, and when daylight comes, Dog, all tuckered out, falls asleep back home. The striking thing about this story is the unusual black-and-white illustrations that are created using brushed graphite powder, pencil, and erasure on paper. Their soft, atmospheric mood and their design and distribution—full-bleed double-page spreads, single-page bleeds, and, particularly, a few stellar sequences in which multiple iterations of characters denote action—show author/illustrator Poster’s skill in telling a story with pictures. Unfortunately, the story itself has problems. Since the animals—raccoons, a bear, rabbits, the coyote or wolf, among others—are depicted behaving as animals do and not anthropomorphically, the story can’t be interpreted as a fantasy. And to romanticize a scenario in which a small domestic dog encountering a larger, wild canine would have a romp and a bit of friendship is fundamentally misleading. In the real nighttime world, the dog would more likely become the other canine’s dinner, so here’s hoping readers won’t take it into their heads to send their pet dog or cat out into the night to have a lovely adventure. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Unusual and strikingly lovely black-and-white illustrations can’t save a problematic storyline. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-525-55378-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Echoes of Runaway Bunny color this exchange between a bath-averse piglet and his patient mother. Using a strategy that would probably be a nonstarter in real life, the mother deflects her stubborn offspring’s string of bath-free occupational conceits with appeals to reason: “Pirates NEVER EVER take baths!” “Pirates don’t get seasick either. But you do.” “Yeesh. I’m an astronaut, okay?” “Well, it is hard to bathe in zero gravity. It’s hard to poop and pee in zero gravity too!” And so on, until Mom’s enticing promise of treasure in the deep sea persuades her little Treasure Hunter to take a dive. Chunky figures surrounded by lots of bright white space in Segal’s minimally detailed watercolors keep the visuals as simple as the plotline. The language isn’t quite as basic, though, and as it rendered entirely in dialogue—Mother Pig’s lines are italicized—adult readers will have to work hard at their vocal characterizations for it to make any sense. Moreover, younger audiences (any audiences, come to that) may wonder what the piggy’s watery closing “EUREKA!!!” is all about too. Not particularly persuasive, but this might coax a few young porkers to get their trotters into the tub. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25425-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Too many bugs, figuratively.
Lucy, “the youngest member of a family of fireflies,” must overcome an irrational, moon-induced anxiety in order to leave her family tree trunk and glow.
The first six pages pull readers into a lush, beautiful world of nighttime: “When the sun has set, silence falls over the Big Forest, and all of the nighttime animals wake up.” Mixed media provide an enchanting forest background, with stylized flora and fauna eventually illuminated by a large, benign moon, because the night “doesn’t like to catch them by surprise.” Turning the page catches readers by surprise, though: the family of fireflies is decidedly comical and silly-looking. Similarly, the text moves from a lulling, magical cadence to a distinct shift in mood as the bugs ready themselves for their foray into the night: “They wave their bottoms in the air, wiggle their feelers, take a deep, deep breath, and sing, ‘Here we go, it’s time to glow!’ ” It’s an acceptable change, but more unevenness follows. Lucy’s excitement about finally joining the other bugs turns to “sobbing” two nights in a row. Instead of directly linking her behavior to understandable reactions of children to newness, the text undermines itself by making Lucy’s parents’ sweet reassurances impotent and using the grandmother’s scientific explanation of moonlight as an unnecessary metaphor. Further detracting from the story, the text becomes ever denser and more complex over the book’s short span.
Too many bugs, figuratively. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-84-16147-00-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Cuento de Luz
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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