Pass this up or turn it down, as you will.
A kid takes a unique elevator ride.
A young child presses an elevator button to summon it. Accompanied by some unusual-looking animals, the kid ascends. The text is almost entirely composed of idiomatic expressions that include the word up (“What’s up?” “Fired up!” “Jazzed up!” etc.). Beginning on the ground floor, the kid encounters a different expression (and animal companions) on each floor, depicted in a quirky, imaginative fashion. If the point is to help readers clearly understand what the expressions mean, it doesn’t generally succeed. Wrapped up is illustrated with a picture of the kid paddling a canoe, joined by a rabbit and a bird, for instance. Some interpretations fare very slightly better: What’s up? features multiple rabbits carefully listening to their cellphones; Jazzed up! shows the kid, a trio of mice, and three extremely large rats playing music; Spruced up! depicts the kid painting white birds with bright colors. As the elevator reaches the sixth floor, nighttime has fallen, and the kid goes “back down,” the only departure from phrases with up. Since none of the up expressions connote actual levitation, the elevator conceit feels irrelevant; a playground swing or seesaw might have worked as well (or poorly) to represent up-and-down movement. Readers will likely have no better grasp of the expressions after perusing this book than before. However, the charmingly surreal and brightly colored illustrations may garner attention. The kid presents White.
Pass this up or turn it down, as you will. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-56846-380-3
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Creative Editions/Creative Company
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent.
Wouldn’t the same housecat look very different to a dog and a mouse, a bee and a flea, a fox, a goldfish, or a skunk?
The differences are certainly vast in Wenzel’s often melodramatic scenes. Benign and strokable beneath the hand of a light-skinned child (visible only from the waist down), the brindled cat is transformed to an ugly, skinny slinker in a suspicious dog’s view. In a fox’s eyes it looks like delectably chubby prey but looms, a terrifying monster, over a cowering mouse. It seems a field of colored dots to a bee; jagged vibrations to an earthworm; a hairy thicket to a flea. “Yes,” runs the terse commentary’s refrain, “they all saw the cat.” Words in italics and in capital letters in nearly every line give said commentary a deliberate cadence and pacing: “The cat walked through the world, / with its whiskers, ears, and paws… // and the fish saw A CAT.” Along with inviting more reflective viewers to ruminate about perception and subjectivity, the cat’s perambulations offer elemental visual delights in the art’s extreme and sudden shifts in color, texture, and mood from one page or page turn to the next.
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4521-5013-0
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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