Heartfelt and filled with possible connections for families.
A house loses its inhabitants and longs to be loved again.
Bricks laid and timbers trembling, a newly built house eagerly awaits its first residents: a White family of four (soon to be five) with pets. From the “pitter-patter of a baby’s tiny feet” to the “sweet scent of bread baking,” the house delights in being used and loved year after year. The house revels in the “bustle of activity” as its residents grow up and age until, one day, the family moves away. Confused and hurt, the house keeps prospective buyers away by shaking its roof shingles and creaking its front steps. Finally realizing the family will never return, the house eventually opens its doors—and heart—to an interracial gay couple. The pair not only renovates the place, but starts their own family in its walls. Though comparisons to Virginia Lee Burton’s classic The Little House (1942) are inevitable, Kosinski’s text gives this house a chance to speak for itself. The contemplative narrative voice achieves the delicate balance of being sentimental without becoming maudlin. Docampo’s colorful double-page spreads delightfully extend the text with small details. Her stylized human figures, small against the grandeur of the house’s rooms and furniture, can be difficult to make out. Yet the expert use of light and dark creates beautiful, emotional contrasts of warmth and isolation—a wonderful match of both verbal and visual tone.
Heartfelt and filled with possible connections for families. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-0720-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Two Lions
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Safe to creep on by.
Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.
In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.
Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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