Sensitive, honest, and expertly done.
A family comes to terms with depression.
A dad teaches his daughter how to surf in the ocean. He is “as tall as the sky,” and she is “his teeny-tiny sunspot.” He usually sings to her in the morning and tucks her in at night. “But right now, things for my dad aren’t bright and yellow. They are a deep, dark blue,” the girl reveals. Shrouded in cobalt shadow on the verso, the father hangs his head while the girl and (presumably) her mother look on worriedly from the sunny recto. Readers learn that when the father is “in the blue,” his “kisses don’t reach as far at night, and the morning is quiet and dim.” The girl tries in vain to cheer him up. All her family can do is “wait together in the blue” until he is ready to get help. They all see a Black therapist—“someone who knows all the colors, from sunny to midnight”—and Dad is shown buying medicine from a White pharmacist. After some time, Dad grows “bright and yellow again,” and the father-daughter surfing adventures resume. The power of Hourigan’s metaphorical yet crystal-clear portrayal of depression lies in its simple but impressively evocative use of color symbolism. The acrylic gouache and color pencil illustrations are suffused with primary colors that convey misery, joy, and anger and that sometimes blend, creating secondary colors that signify the many moods, faces, and grades of depression. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Sensitive, honest, and expertly done. (author's note, resources) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-49762-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wins for compassion and for the refusal to let physical limitations hold one back.
With such short arms, how can Tiny T. Rex give a sad friend a hug?
Fleck goes for cute in the simple, minimally detailed illustrations, drawing the diminutive theropod with a chubby turquoise body and little nubs for limbs under a massive, squared-off head. Impelled by the sight of stegosaurian buddy Pointy looking glum, little Tiny sets out to attempt the seemingly impossible, a comforting hug. Having made the rounds seeking advice—the dino’s pea-green dad recommends math; purple, New Age aunt offers cucumber juice (“That is disgusting”); red mom tells him that it’s OK not to be able to hug (“You are tiny, but your heart is big!”), and blue and yellow older sibs suggest practice—Tiny takes up the last as the most immediately useful notion. Unfortunately, the “tree” the little reptile tries to hug turns out to be a pterodactyl’s leg. “Now I am falling,” Tiny notes in the consistently self-referential narrative. “I should not have let go.” Fortunately, Tiny lands on Pointy’s head, and the proclamation that though Rexes’ hugs may be tiny, “I will do my very best because you are my very best friend” proves just the mood-lightening ticket. “Thank you, Tiny. That was the biggest hug ever.” Young audiences always find the “clueless grown-ups” trope a knee-slapper, the overall tone never turns preachy, and Tiny’s instinctive kindness definitely puts him at (gentle) odds with the dinky dino star of Bob Shea’s Dinosaur Vs. series.
Wins for compassion and for the refusal to let physical limitations hold one back. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7033-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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