A poignant, existential, yet kid-friendly slice-of-(fish)-life story with a splash of humor.
A goldfish’s thoughts swim with the big—and not so big—questions of life.
“When I am swimming, I think about many things,” begins the introspective narrator of indeterminate gender. While swimming inside their fishbowl, they recall being a baby fish hanging in a plastic bag in a pet store; ponder “what it will be like to be old”; and reminisce about “days out” on the ocean and other fish who have crossed their path. They also think about past brushes with “monsters” (the artwork shows a cat); wonder “what it would be like to have legs”; fret about climate change; and—the authorial disguise wearing even thinner—light up with an idea for a book. The book’s back flap mentions that the fish thinks about “falling in love,” but it is not clear exactly where this pans out in the narrative. Levenson’s text is elegantly spare. The goldfish pictured in O’Hagan’s minimalist, mostly close-up illustrations is expressive of both face and body language, gazing longingly out of a window, for instance, and, in one scene, posing on a rock like Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid. Adults can use the spread showing the fish floating inside a light bulb to introduce the concept of metaphor to children. Young readers will relate to the fish’s penchant for daydreaming and will also find common ground (so to speak) in the wry capper: “But mostly all I think about is…dinner.”
A poignant, existential, yet kid-friendly slice-of-(fish)-life story with a splash of humor. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4994-8973-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Windmill Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it.
A guide to better behavior—at home, on the playground, in class, and in the library.
Serving as a sort of overview for the series’ 12 previous exercises in behavior modeling, this latest outing opens with a set of badly behaving dinos, identified in an endpaper key and also inconspicuously in situ. Per series formula, these are paired to leading questions like “Does she spit out her broccoli onto the floor? / Does he shout ‘I hate meat loaf!’ while slamming the door?” (Choruses of “NO!” from young audiences are welcome.) Midway through, the tone changes (“No, dinosaurs don’t”), and good examples follow to the tune of positive declarative sentences: “They wipe up the tables and vacuum the floors. / They share all the books and they never slam doors,” etc. Teague’s customary, humongous prehistoric crew, all depicted in exact detail and with wildly flashy coloration, fill both their spreads and their human-scale scenes as their human parents—no same-sex couples but some are racially mixed, and in one the man’s the cook—join a similarly diverse set of sibs and other children in either disapprobation or approving smiles. All in all, it’s a well-tested mix of oblique and prescriptive approaches to proper behavior as well as a lighthearted way to play up the use of “please,” “thank you,” and even “I’ll help when you’re hurt.”
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-36334-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Go, Nathan! Stick it to the Man...er, Fairy.
A lad’s determination to keep his baby teeth sets him against not only the tooth fairy, but the whole Fay bureaucracy behind her.
Far more interested in the teeth than the money, Nathan ingeniously hides each fallen chopper—to no avail, as his assigned tooth fairy is just as determined to collect them, and she comes armed with a high-tech Super Tooth Sensomatic to do the job. Clad in formal office togs and topped with a ’do that wouldn’t dare show even a hair out of place in Parker’s comically detailed digital paintings, the tiny tooth fairy positively oozes bureaucratic severity. But Nathan outlasts her and even a squad of thuggish enforcers euphemistically dubbed “Tooth Experts” from the 15th League of Enchanted Commerce to earn both a rare certificate of exemption and a dental rebate. “ ‘Thanks!’ said Nathan. ‘I’ll keep them forever.’ / And he did.” The increasingly stern official missives from the tooth fairy are depicted in typescript on letterhead in the illustrations. While children are unlikely to have encountered communications of this ilk on their own behalfs, they will likely have seen their grown-ups tearing their hair out over similar ones—and their grown-ups will enjoy them thoroughly.
Go, Nathan! Stick it to the Man...er, Fairy. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4169-7915-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
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