Just a few dabs at the topic, utilitarian at best.
Searching for a subject for a classroom art project leads a young student to discoveries about light, colors, and paint.
Visits to a playground and an art museum, a museum guide’s minilecture on pigments and binders, and a home demonstration involving a flashlight and a glass of water fill out a sketchy storyline with some basic information about the visible spectrum. With his dad and his little sister as a gobsmacked audience, young James shows how light is reflected and refracted and also explores the relationship between primary and secondary hues on a simple color wheel—all on the way to proposing a mural for the school library’s wall that everyone in his class can decorate. That mural, along with the chalk drawings and paintings James inspects, is blandly generic in Pottage’s illustrations. Her figures are staid, too, though she uses a range of skin tones in depicting the students and teacher who join James and his family (who are light-skinned with dark hair) at the final unveiling. The dark-skinned museum guide uses a wheelchair. Budding artists may appreciate the technical background, but for capturing the “wonder,” other takes on the topic, such as Shelley Rotner and Anne Woodhull’s bright Colors (2019) or David Elliott’s Color the Sky (2022), illustrated by Evan Turk, do a better job. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Just a few dabs at the topic, utilitarian at best. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-8075-7268-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so...
A pro bono Twinkie of a book invites readers to fly off in a magic plane to bring clean water to our planet’s oceans, deserts, and brown children.
Following a confusingly phrased suggestion beneath a soft-focus world map to “touch the Earth. Now touch where you live,” a shake of the volume transforms it into a plane with eyes and feathered wings that flies with the press of a flat, gray “button” painted onto the page. Pressing like buttons along the journey releases a gush of fresh water from the ground—and later, illogically, provides a filtration device that changes water “from yucky to clean”—for thirsty groups of smiling, brown-skinned people. At other stops, a tap on the button will “help irrigate the desert,” and touching floating bottles and other debris in the ocean supposedly makes it all disappear so the fish can return. The 20 children Coh places on a globe toward the end are varied of skin tone, but three of the four young saviors she plants in the flier’s cockpit as audience stand-ins are white. The closing poem isn’t so openly parochial, though it seldom rises above vague feel-good sentiments: “Love the Earth, the moon and sun. / All the children can be one.”
“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so easy to clean the place up and give everyone a drink? (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5107-2083-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Readers (and listeners) will think that this book is the bee’s knees.
Children will be buzzing to learn more about honeybees after reading this story.
Hall takes her readers on a sunny romp through a springtime pasture abuzz with friendly honeybees in this bright and cheerful picture book. Hall’s rhyme scheme is inviting and mirrors the staccato sounds of a bee buzzing. At times, however, meaning seems to take a back seat to the rhyme. The bees are suggested to “tap” while flying, a noise that adult readers might have trouble explaining to curious listeners. Later, the “hill” the bees return to may elicit further questions, as this point is not addressed textually or visually. Minor quibbles aside, the vocabulary is on-point as the bees demonstrate the various stages of nectar collection and honey creation. Arsenault’s illustrations, a combination of ink, gouache, graphite, and colored pencil, are energetic and cheerful. Extra points should be awarded for properly illustrating a natural honeybee hive (as opposed to the often depicted wasp nest). The expressive bees are also well-done. Their faces are welcoming, but their sharp noses hint at the stingers that may be lurking behind them. Hall’s ending note to readers will be appreciated by adults but will require their interpretation to be accessible to children. A sensible choice for read-alouds and STEAM programs.
Readers (and listeners) will think that this book is the bee’s knees. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6997-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
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