A breezy seasonal storytime choice, though the art carries most of the weight—and does so delightfully.
Sixteen tiny tots march through the four seasons, finding much to do in the varied weather.
The beginning immediately recalls Madeline—the yellow slickers, slim black sketching, and even two straight lines. However, there isn’t a smallest among this group to steal the show; all 16 multiracial gals (though more have pale skin than not) share the spotlight equally. The first season they explore is summer. Following the lively rhymes (“A big, bright sun. / Let’s have some fun! / We swim and dive and splash and run”) the girls teeter on the edges of a diving board and snap to formation for a water-ballet routine. Fall has them marching through the city, leaping in leaf piles, and reaching up high for apples. Winter highlights Aki’s willingness to play with perspective: the girls peer up into the falling snow, mouths open to catch the flakes, while readers look down on them from above. Spring is full of requisite flowers, and it also brings a final weather feat that never ceases to amaze. Two final pages include a small amount of background information on the seasons (accurate to temperate climates).
A breezy seasonal storytime choice, though the art carries most of the weight—and does so delightfully. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62779-620-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Godwin Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender...
A polar-bear parent speaks poetically of love for a child.
A genderless adult and cub travel through the landscapes of an arctic year. Each of the softly rendered double-page paintings has a very different feel and color palette as the pair go through the seasons, walking through wintry ice and snow and green summer meadows, cavorting in the blue ocean, watching whales, and playing beside musk oxen. The rhymes of the four-line stanzas are not forced, as is the case too often in picture books of this type: “When cold, winter winds / blow the leaves far and wide, / You’ll cross the great icebergs / with me by your side.” On a dark, snowy night, the loving parent says: “But for now, cuddle close / while the stars softly shine. // I’ll always be yours, / and you’ll always be mine.” As the last illustration shows the pair curled up for sleep, young listeners will be lulled to sweet dreams by the calm tenor of the pictures and the words. While far from original, this timeless theme is always in demand, and the combination of delightful illustrations and poetry that scans well make this a good choice for early-childhood classrooms, public libraries, and one-on-one home read-alouds.
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender restrictions. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68010-070-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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