Kids can use the word patterns of this easy story to discuss their own experiences.
Follow a young child who travels to school on the New York City subway and goes about the day.
In short phrases that emphasize directional words—highlighted in different colors—the unnamed narrator gives readers a taste of daily urban experience. The narrator goes “out the door” and through the neighborhood with a parent. Together they approach the stairs “outside the station,” stand “at the booth,” and then go “beyond the turnstile” to the subway train. “Amid the crowd” the two wait, the red-jacketed kid with brown skin and black hair and the parent with the same coloring. Their fellow commuters are diverse. They travel a few stops and exit “into daylight,” going “around the corner” and “inside my school.” Teachers and students are diverse, and one person uses a wheelchair. The school day passes, and the process of going home begins, but the return trip and the evening at home with both parents is compressed into a series of thumbnail panels in one double-page spread. The collage illustrations vary perspective, sometimes showing the travelers clearly while challenging readers to look for them at other times. Two subway scenes are particular striking, one of the travelers waiting from the opposite platform and the other a cutaway of the train passing below the streets. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-17-inch double-page spreads viewed at 25% of actual size.)
Kids can use the word patterns of this easy story to discuss their own experiences. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4644-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A welcome addition to autumnal storytelling—and to tales of traditional enemies overcoming their history.
Ferry and the Fans portray a popular seasonal character’s unlikely friendship.
Initially, the protagonist is shown in his solitary world: “Scarecrow stands alone and scares / the fox and deer, / the mice and crows. / It’s all he does. It’s all he knows.” His presence is effective; the animals stay outside the fenced-in fields, but the omniscient narrator laments the character’s lack of friends or places to go. Everything changes when a baby crow falls nearby. Breaking his pole so he can bend, the scarecrow picks it up, placing the creature in the bib of his overalls while singing a lullaby. Both abandon natural tendencies until the crow learns to fly—and thus departs. The aabb rhyme scheme flows reasonably well, propelling the narrative through fall, winter, and spring, when the mature crow returns with a mate to build a nest in the overalls bib that once was his home. The Fan brothers capture the emotional tenor of the seasons and the main character in their panoramic pencil, ballpoint, and digital compositions. Particularly poignant is the close-up of the scarecrow’s burlap face, his stitched mouth and leaf-rimmed head conveying such sadness after his companion goes. Some adults may wonder why the scarecrow seems to have only partial agency, but children will be tuned into the problem, gratified by the resolution.
A welcome addition to autumnal storytelling—and to tales of traditional enemies overcoming their history. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-247576-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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