A heart-penetrating, heartbreaking book with exceptional mastery in text and illustration.
On the eve of losing everything and with danger still ahead, a mother and daughter exhibit the perseverance of the human spirit in wartime.
At the beginning of this Norwegian import, a mother and her daughter find a dry place in their roofless and almost wall-less house to sleep. Mama comforts her daughter, the narrator, with the story of a large bird that descends from the mountains as night falls and spreads its wings over their house to protect them from danger. Dark, foreboding illustrations show the protagonists in a state of terror and shock, their city ravaged by war. When the girl wakes up, the bird is there, its head enormous next to her slim body. “Have you forgotten everything? it asks. / … / All the wonderful things that were here before.” Then, one by one, it reminds the girl of the warm, happy memories that are still inside her, and as they manifest on the page, they gradually lift up her spirit and add color to the book. The girl and mother can leave after she sees “all the colors in the sky,” the bird says. What’s most important is to “stay together.” In Duzakin’s soft-edged illustrations, mother and daughter have pale skin and straight, black hair; their home is unspecified, but architectural and decorative details suggest Eastern Europe. The book ends with the mother and child on the move with a few bags, looking at a vista of their shattered town illuminated by a rainbow in the sky and holding each other’s hands.
A heart-penetrating, heartbreaking book with exceptional mastery in text and illustration. (Picture book. 8-14)Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8028-5518-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious.
If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?
For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the “transcript” of Alex’s iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has “light brown skin,” records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty.
Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-18637-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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