An engaging meditation on life cycles, with hope for renewal after the fall.
A leaf experiences its life cycle—from bud to nutrient—in Fleming’s rhyming picture book showcasing imagination and discovery.
A small bud grows on a huge maple tree. It experiences birdsong in the branches and watches life in the yard below. A school-age child named Max, who has fair skin and brown hair, is a central figure in its daily life, and the leaf wonders what life is like inside Max’s house: “Maybe they sleep on a grand golden bed, / with honey filled towers that float overhead,” it muses. As fall comes, the leaf wonders where some of the other leaves have gone. As more and more descend, the leaf knows its time is coming; it’s grateful to be plucked from the tree and pressed against the window, where it finally sees the inside of Max’s house. After some animal encounters and a realization of how large the world is, the leaf is finally buried in soil and snow, where it becomes a nutrient for future flowers. Fleming’s couplets generally scan well, with rhyming phrases that are only occasionally convoluted to attain the rhyme. The vocabulary skews toward independent readers, but lap readers are likely to enjoy poring over Vinokurova’s illustrations, especially the brightly colored image of a human house as seen in the leaf’s imagination.
An engaging meditation on life cycles, with hope for renewal after the fall.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 979-8988910909
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Kahu Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Innovative and thoroughly enjoyable.
You think you know shapes? Animals? Blend them together, and you might see them both a little differently!
What a mischievous twist on a concept book! With wordplay and a few groan-inducing puns, Neal creates connections among animals and shapes that are both unexpected and so seemingly obvious that readers might wonder why they didn’t see them all along. Of course, a “lazy turtle” meeting an oval would create the side-splitting combo of a “SLOW-VAL.” A dramatic page turn transforms a deeply saturated, clean-lined green oval by superimposing a head and turtle shell atop, with watery blue ripples completing the illusion. Minimal backgrounds and sketchy, impressionistic detailing keep the focus right on the zany animals. Beginning with simple shapes, the geometric forms become more complicated as the book advances, taking readers from a “soaring bird” that meets a triangle to become a “FLY-ANGLE” to a “sleepy lion” nonagon “YAWN-AGON.” Its companion text, Animal Colors, delves into color theory, this time creating entirely hybrid animals, such as the “GREEN WHION” with maned head and whale’s tail made from a “blue whale and a yellow lion.” It’s a compelling way to visualize color mixing, and like Animal Shapes, it’s got verve. Who doesn’t want to shout out that a yellow kangaroo/green moose blend is a “CHARTREUSE KANGAMOOSE”?
Innovative and thoroughly enjoyable. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0534-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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