A moving portrayal of resilience that pairs exquisite free verse with evocative, richly textured drawings.
Open-ended text and illustrations allow for infinite readings while maintaining deep feeling in Lanagan’s (The Brides of Rollrock Island, 2012, etc.) debut picture book.
The door-shaped cutout in the front cover leads readers directly into landscape-patterned endpapers and frontmatter, while the extra-large trim size heightens the intensity of Cai’s initial illustrations, which are dominated by dark red skies, gigantic, black, four-legged creatures that chase a small human figure, and jagged-edged architectural debris. These dramatic scenes slowly give way to lighter, softer-hued, sprawling landscapes accented with white as the pale-skinned narrator describes her own personal haven called Tintinnabula. There, she says, “soft rains fall and silver, / …soft bells ring and sweetly, / distantly, melancholically.” The narrator’s movement from “times of drought and wind… / and stress and argument, / … / and…times of fear” to “green, breathing, grassy hills” reaches a transitional moment in a spread in which the jagged, ruined stonework and four-legged creatures appear distant, fading into negative space as a sequence of vignettes offers glimpses of the narrator’s progress toward a lush green land filled with trees—and fewer man-made structures. Readers will be left wondering: Does she physically travel, or is this an internal, emotional journey? What—and where—is she traveling away from? Can, or will, others join her?
A moving portrayal of resilience that pairs exquisite free verse with evocative, richly textured drawings. (Picture book. 6-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-74297-525-2
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Little Hare/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists.
How to raise money for a coveted poster: put your friends to work!
John, founder of the FUBU fashion line and a Shark Tank venture capitalist, offers a self-referential blueprint for financial success. Having only half of the $10 he needs for a Minka J poster, Daymond forks over $1 to buy a plain T-shirt, paints a picture of the pop star on it, sells it for $5, and uses all of his cash to buy nine more shirts. Then he recruits three friends to decorate them with his design and help sell them for an unspecified amount (from a conveniently free and empty street-fair booth) until they’re gone. The enterprising entrepreneur reimburses himself for the shirts and splits the remaining proceeds, which leaves him with enough for that poster as well as a “brand-new business book,” while his friends express other fiscal strategies: saving their share, spending it all on new art supplies, or donating part and buying a (math) book with the rest. (In a closing summation, the author also suggests investing in stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrency.) Though Miles cranks up the visual energy in her sparsely detailed illustrations by incorporating bright colors and lots of greenbacks, the actual advice feels a bit vague. Daymond is Black; most of the cast are people of color. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists. (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-56727-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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