Pure saccharine.
Images in clouds inspire memories.
Written in rhyming couplets, this love letter from a mother to her nearly grown daughter recounts the key moments of childhood that help define the personality of the girl. Each moment is inspired by the sight of clouds passing by overhead on the mother’s walk. Illustrations combine lush, painterly backgrounds representing the real world and cartoon drawings for the memories of childhood that the mother imagines within the clouds. The juxtaposition of styles draws readers’ eyes naturally to the imagined characters with paper-white skin and hair frolicking in the sky without detracting from the real-world representation of the White-presenting mother. The busy compositions may become muddled for large group storytimes but will function adequately with small groups and best with intimate lap reads. The text doesn’t keep pace with the stylized illustrations, the couplets often stumbling to rhyme as such combinations as home / alone or become / young are shoehorned together. Readers may wonder why this mother isn’t spreading the love to her sons, depicted in the memories. In fact, the audience for this nostalgic picture-book ode to the vanished childhood of a kid who is revealed to be a young teen is unclear. A gratuitous three-page endnote explaining the sincerity of the story is as effective as someone explaining why a joke is funny; it’s unnecessary icing on an already-too-sweet tale. (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Pure saccharine. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3953-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
A retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy.
Robo-parents Diode and Lugnut present daughter Cathode with a new little brother—who requires, unfortunately, some assembly.
Arriving in pieces from some mechanistic version of Ikea, little Flange turns out to be a cute but complicated tyke who immediately falls apart…and then rockets uncontrollably about the room after an overconfident uncle tinkers with his basic design. As a squad of helpline techies and bevies of neighbors bearing sludge cake and like treats roll in, the cluttered and increasingly crowded scene deteriorates into madcap chaos—until at last Cath, with help from Roomba-like robodog Sprocket, stages an intervention by whisking the hapless new arrival off to a backyard workshop for a proper assembly and software update. “You’re such a good big sister!” warbles her frazzled mom. Wiesner’s robots display his characteristic clean lines and even hues but endearingly look like vaguely anthropomorphic piles of random jet-engine parts and old vacuum cleaners loosely connected by joints of armored cable. They roll hither and thither through neatly squared-off panels and pages in infectiously comical dismay. Even the end’s domestic tranquility lasts only until Cathode spots the little box buried in the bigger one’s packing material: “TWINS!” (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at 52% of actual size.)
A retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-544-98731-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
Earnest and silly by turns, it doesn’t quite capture the attention or the imagination, although surely its heart is in the...
Rhymed couplets convey the story of a girl who likes to build things but is shy about it. Neither the poetry nor Rosie’s projects always work well.
Rosie picks up trash and oddments where she finds them, stashing them in her attic room to work on at night. Once, she made a hat for her favorite zookeeper uncle to keep pythons away, and he laughed so hard that she never made anything publicly again. But when her great-great-aunt Rose comes to visit and reminds Rosie of her own past building airplanes, she expresses her regret that she still has not had the chance to fly. Great-great-aunt Rose is visibly modeled on Rosie the Riveter, the iconic, red-bandanna–wearing poster woman from World War II. Rosie decides to build a flying machine and does so (it’s a heli-o-cheese-copter), but it fails. She’s just about to swear off making stuff forever when Aunt Rose congratulates her on her failure; now she can go on to try again. Rosie wears her hair swooped over one eye (just like great-great-aunt Rose), and other figures have exaggerated hairdos, tiny feet and elongated or greatly rounded bodies. The detritus of Rosie’s collections is fascinating, from broken dolls and stuffed animals to nails, tools, pencils, old lamps and possibly an erector set. And cheddar-cheese spray.
Earnest and silly by turns, it doesn’t quite capture the attention or the imagination, although surely its heart is in the right place. (historical note) (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0845-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
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