A visually interesting concept book, full of wonder and lightsomeness, that’s useful for teaching young ones about colors.
Sitting by the window, a young child sees a red bird flying past and is drawn outside.
Once in the garden, the child, who could be a girl or a boy, peeks out from behind a tree, gazes up at the bird, and narrates: “Red big. / Red small. / Red sits on my garden wall.” Red big refers to the huge tree with a vast canopy of red leaves, while Red small refers to the bird perched nearby. The child spies eight more birds, one by one, each a different color. While the birds’ species aren’t specified, they appear to be a red cardinal, a blue jay, a yellow canary, a red-winged blackbird, a white dove, a green hummingbird, an orange oriole, a purple honeycreeper, and a brown woodcreeper (or possibly a house wren). The singsong rhyming text introduces various early learning concepts such as directionality (“Brown left. / Brown right. / Brown in shadow. / Brown in light”) and height (“Blue low. / Blue high. / Blue has taken to the sky”), and the placement of words on the page cleverly underscores the concept. The backgrounds of each spread and the child’s face, skin, and clothing, which are transparent at first, cumulatively take on the hues of the birds until the pages frenetically burst with color. The pastel-and-charcoal illustrations become increasingly energetic, whimsical and full of scribbles, as the child progressively adopts the behavior of the birds, blissfully singing and losing themselves in euphoric flight. Unfortunately, the climactic ending scenes are crowded with so many abstract lines and have such a chaotic composition that they lack the sense of open space needed for flight. Most of the verse scans well, though a missing syllable at the end makes the closing line sag.
A visually interesting concept book, full of wonder and lightsomeness, that’s useful for teaching young ones about colors. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-21207-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
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
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Count on construction die-hards falling in love, but discerning readers would be wise to look elsewhere for their...
Less ambitious than Chris Gall’s widely known Dinotrux (2009) and sequels, this British import systematically relegates each dinosaur/construction-equipment hybrid to its most logical job.
The title figures are introduced as bigger than both diggers and dinosaurs, and rhyming text and two construction-helmeted kids show just what these creatures are capable of. Each diggersaur has a specific job to do and a distinct sound effect. The dozersaurus moves rocks with a “SCRAAAAPE!!!” while the rollersaurus flattens lumps with a cheery “TOOT TOOT!!” Each diggersaur is numbered, with 12 in all, allowing this to be a counting book on the sly. As the diggersaurs (not all of which dig) perform jobs that regular construction equipment can do, albeit on a larger scale, there is no particular reason why any of them should have dinosaurlike looks other than just ’cause. Peppy computer art tries valiantly to attract attention away from the singularly unoriginal text. “Diggersaurs dig with bites so BIG, / each SCOOP creates a crater. // They’re TOUGH and STRONG / with necks so long— / they’re super EXCAVATORS!” Far more interesting are the two human characters, a white girl and a black boy, that flit about the pictures offering commentary and action. Much of the fun of the book can be found in trying to spot them on every two-page spread.
Count on construction die-hards falling in love, but discerning readers would be wise to look elsewhere for their dino/construction kicks. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-4779-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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