Tender, moving, and hopeful.
A beloved violin is lost and found.
The lives of Papa, Mama, Itzak, and Feiga are filled with love and celebration of their Jewish traditions. Papa is an accomplished musician whose beautiful violin has a place of honor in their home. When he plays “quick and lively” songs, the children dance with joy. When Papa’s music turns “slow and sorrowful,” it invites quiet contemplation. Itzak attempts to play the instrument, with ear-bashing results, but Papa assures him that that he’ll improve with practice. Then everything changes. One Shabbos night, soldiers show up and take the violin. It ends up in a cellar, languishing with other looted items “in silence” for many years until it’s rescued by a luthier who lovingly restores it to its former glory. The luthier passes the violin on to a young boy named Isaac, whose father recalls his grandfather’s violin skill. Isaac’s first attempt exactly matches Itzak’s initial screeches, the luthier echoes Itzak’s father’s encouraging phrases and sentiments, and Isaac’s tunes are, by turns, “quick and lively” and “slow and sorrowful.” As a master violinist, in concert halls around world, he plays music of hope. The book doesn’t explicitly mention Nazis or the Holocaust until the author’s note, and the family’s fate is left unspoken. But the striking, detailed, multi-perspective illustrations contain hints for sharp-eyed readers as the author brings this sorrowful yet optimistic tale full circle. The main characters are tan-skinned; background characters are diverse.
Tender, moving, and hopeful. (photographs, website) (Picture book. 6-11)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9798765604199
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kar-Ben
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.
An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.
In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Blandly laudatory.
The iconic animator introduces young readers to each “happy place” in his life.
The tally begins with his childhood home in Marceline, Missouri, and climaxes with Disneyland (carefully designed to be “the happiest place on Earth”), but the account really centers on finding his true happy place, not on a map but in drawing. In sketching out his early flubs and later rocket to the top, the fictive narrator gives Ub Iwerks and other Disney studio workers a nod (leaving his labor disputes with them unmentioned) and squeezes in quick references to his animated films, from Steamboat Willie to Winnie the Pooh (sans Fantasia and Song of the South). Eliopoulos incorporates stills from the films into his cartoon illustrations and, characteristically for this series, depicts Disney as a caricature, trademark mustache in place on outsized head even in childhood years and child sized even as an adult. Human figures default to white, with occasional people of color in crowd scenes and (ahistorically) in the animation studio. One unidentified animator builds up the role-modeling with an observation that Walt and Mickey were really the same (“Both fearless; both resourceful”). An assertion toward the end—“So when do you stop being a child? When you stop dreaming”—muddles the overall follow-your-bliss message. A timeline to the EPCOT Center’s 1982 opening offers photos of the man with select associates, rodent and otherwise. An additional series entry, I Am Marie Curie, publishes simultaneously, featuring a gowned, toddler-sized version of the groundbreaking physicist accepting her two Nobel prizes.
Blandly laudatory. (bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2875-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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