Both sensitive and sensible: If some dragons can’t be vanquished, with time and help they can be borne.
The weight of profound loss looks just like a dragon as it sits atop a grieving child.
“Have you ever seen an invisible dragon?” the unnamed narrator asks, describing how just such a creature came one day out of the blue and changed everything—making it hard to get out of bed, casting heavy shadows, ignoring tantrums and attempts to bargain. Gradually, though, the dragon takes leave for ever longer intervals, and, at last, after a day in the park with a friend and then an eighth birthday party, even when present it seems less oppressive. The nature of the loss is never directly mentioned, but the narrator remarks that “We had to get used to movie night without her famous peanut brittle popcorn,” as the child snuggles disconsolately with a sad-looking adult, and Sif leaves further hints in glimpses of an open photo album and an extra apron in the kitchen. The semitransparent, cartoonish dragon never looks threatening; by the end it has not vanished but shrunk down to a manageable size. Finally, pointing out that the initial question about seeing an invisible dragon was silly, the child closes with a wonderfully perceptive insight: “You can never see one by looking straight at it. You have to look at the person underneath.” The white-presenting child is never gendered.
Both sensitive and sensible: If some dragons can’t be vanquished, with time and help they can be borne. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68364-184-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sounds True
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends
Gerald the elephant learns a truth familiar to every preschooler—heck, every human: “Waiting is not easy!”
When Piggie cartwheels up to Gerald announcing that she has a surprise for him, Gerald is less than pleased to learn that the “surprise is a surprise.” Gerald pumps Piggie for information (it’s big, it’s pretty, and they can share it), but Piggie holds fast on this basic principle: Gerald will have to wait. Gerald lets out an almighty “GROAN!” Variations on this basic exchange occur throughout the day; Gerald pleads, Piggie insists they must wait; Gerald groans. As the day turns to twilight (signaled by the backgrounds that darken from mauve to gray to charcoal), Gerald gets grumpy. “WE HAVE WASTED THE WHOLE DAY!…And for WHAT!?” Piggie then gestures up to the Milky Way, which an awed Gerald acknowledges “was worth the wait.” Willems relies even more than usual on the slightest of changes in posture, layout and typography, as two waiting figures can’t help but be pretty static. At one point, Piggie assumes the lotus position, infuriating Gerald. Most amusingly, Gerald’s elephantine groans assume weighty physicality in spread-filling speech bubbles that knock Piggie to the ground. And the spectacular, photo-collaged images of the Milky Way that dwarf the two friends makes it clear that it was indeed worth the wait.
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends . (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-9957-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
A close encounter of the best kind.
Left behind when the space bus departs, a child discovers that the moon isn’t as lifeless as it looks.
While the rest of the space-suited class follows the teacher like ducklings, one laggard carrying crayons and a sketchbook sits down to draw our home planet floating overhead, falls asleep, and wakes to see the bus zooming off. The bright yellow bus, the gaggle of playful field-trippers, and even the dull gray boulders strewn over the equally dull gray lunar surface have a rounded solidity suggestive of Plasticine models in Hare’s wordless but cinematic scenes…as do the rubbery, one-eyed, dull gray creatures (think: those stress-busting dolls with ears that pop out when squeezed) that emerge from the regolith. The mutual shock lasts but a moment before the lunarians eagerly grab the proffered crayons to brighten the bland gray setting with silly designs. The creatures dive into the dust when the bus swoops back down but pop up to exchange goodbye waves with the errant child, who turns out to be an olive-skinned kid with a mop of brown hair last seen drawing one of their new friends with the one crayon—gray, of course—left in the box. Body language is expressive enough in this debut outing to make a verbal narrative superfluous.
A close encounter of the best kind. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4253-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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