A tender tale of love and food triumphing over loss.
A Latine child remembers her grandmother’s love through the scents and tastes of a favorite soup in this debut picture book.
On a rainy day, Dulce Ramos yearns for her grandmother’s fideo soup. But because Abuela has died, Dulce believes there’s no way to figure out the recipe. Remembering the times she watched Abuela cook, Dulce decides to try her own recipe—to disastrous results. In tears from her failure and grief, Dulce explains to her mother: “I was missing her, and I thought making some fideo would make me feel better, but it just made me feel worse!” Dulce and her mother wish they’d learned the recipe from Abuela, but as they share their memories of how they helped her at each step of the process, they realize they know more than they thought. They start to make the soup, and the final product tastes like Abuela’s love for them. This touching story of sorrow and togetherness gives a strong sense of the feelings of sadness people experience when their relatives die as well as delivering an empowering message that memories keep their love for them alive. Tijerina presents simple, brief passages on each page, incorporating some Spanish vocabulary to great effect, letting her illustrations convey the action. The geometrically styled cartoon images—featuring big, round eyes and triangle noses—are so heartfelt readers will imagine the smells (of delicious fideo and Dulce’s mistake) coming right off the page.
A tender tale of love and food triumphing over loss.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2022
ISBN: 9781736418239
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Del Alma Publications, LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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
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