A sweet, uplifting garden tale about belonging.
A girl and a magical bush both discover what’s special about them in this picture book written by a father-and-son team.
When lonely, young Clara hears a bush whispering to her in the winter, the white girl happily collects its berries and holds onto them until they can be planted in the spring. Soon, she takes them to her hidden garden, where the plants and flowers are her friends. She plants the berries, waters them, and gets rewarded with a sprout. When the bush matures, Clara is delighted, but the garden’s other plants consider the newcomer dreadfully plain. Feeling sad, the bush asks the wise old walnut tree for advice, and the sage replies: “Be patient and someday YOU WILL KNOW YOUR PURPOSE.” That fall, the bush turns red, becoming a burning bush, and it realizes that Clara’s joy is its purpose. By having the bush echo Clara’s loneliness, and resonate with the way the girl feels different, the Kolbabas allow young readers to identify with both plant and child, keeping scary feelings of being alone at bay. Their friendship and the recognition of the value of diversity offer comforting messages of acceptance and love. The straightforward prose doesn’t shy away from slightly challenging vocabulary words (magnolia, crimson) and longer sentences, making the tale best suited for independent readers. Despite some pages of lengthy text, Leuchovius’ beautiful paintings shine, showing by turns anthropomorphic and realistic plant life to heighten the story’s touching moments.
A sweet, uplifting garden tale about belonging.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2023
ISBN: 979-8988401605
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Let these crayons go back into their box.
The Crayons return to celebrate Easter.
Six crayons (Red, Orange, Yellow, Esteban, who is green and wears a yellow cape, White, and Blue) each take a shape and scribble designs on it. Purple, perplexed and almost angry, keeps asking why no one is creating an egg, but the six friends have a great idea. They take the circle decorated with red shapes, the square adorned with orange squiggles “the color of the sun,” the triangle with yellow designs, also “the color of the sun” (a bit repetitious), a rectangle with green wavy lines, a white star, about which Purple remarks: “DID you even color it?” and a rhombus covered with blue markings and slap the shapes onto a big, light-brown egg. Then the conversation turns to hiding the large object in plain sight. The joke doesn’t really work, the shapes are not clear enough for a concept book, and though colors are delineated, it’s not a very original color book. There’s a bit of clever repartee. When Purple observe that Esteban’s green rectangle isn’t an egg, Esteban responds, “No, but MY GOSH LOOK how magnificent it is!” Still, that won’t save this lackluster book, which barely scratches the surface of Easter, whether secular or religious. The multimedia illustrations, done in the same style as the other series entries, are always fun, but perhaps it’s time to retire these anthropomorphic coloring implements. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Let these crayons go back into their box. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-62105-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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