This meditation on the patterns of life shines with reminders of what we carry with us as we grow.
A series of moments, mundane and meaningful, capture the wonder of a life well lived.
Each spread in the book offers a set of opposites. A baby is “a small person in a big chair” awaiting “squishy oatmeal in a hard bowl.” Three pages later, that baby is a child who greets their returning parents, feeling “a cold jacket on a warm face.” Soon the little one becomes a student, a parent, and, finally, a grandparent. Salmieri’s colored-pencil drawings reveal the constants that follow the protagonist as they age; plants, bluebirds, and a black dog all reappear throughout. Deeper connections are implied, too. A microscope gifted in childhood foreshadows a career in science, and the protagonist’s future partner can be spotted in the background of the lab in which they work. This play between text and illustration will engage young readers, while the journey through familiar beats of life is sure to tug at caretakers’ heartstrings. The protagonist has the same black hair and tan skin as one of their parents; their other parent has brown hair and skin a shade lighter. The protagonist’s partner is lighter-skinned, and their grandchild is brown-skinned. Background characters are racially diverse but differ little in body type. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
This meditation on the patterns of life shines with reminders of what we carry with us as we grow. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9780593461976
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Rocky Pond Books/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
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
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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