This will have young readers hoping to stay up for a glimpse of “colors unseen.” (Picture book. 3-6)
If you think the night is black, think again.
Snider’s elegant nocturnal idyll explores the many colors visible to those who “look closer.” The dark blue sky, “a big yellow moon beginning to rise,” the glow of red neon in the city and of faraway yellow headlights in the country, the glowing green eyes of raccoons on the prowl—it turns out the night is fairly pulsing with colors. Thick ink outlines rooftops, sinuous tree branches, skyscrapers, moths, and more; the appropriately nighttime palette will have eyes straining a bit to see dark-gray outlines against dark-blue sky and black foreground shapes. For all that his shapes are simplified, at times even childlike in their line, the effect is startlingly realistic. The sky above the neon-lit city glows murky orange from the light below; in contrast, “a thousand silver stars spilled across the sky” are crystalline white against the navy-blue vastness above a quiet farm. Text is set primarily in gray and white against dark backgrounds, a large-font serif type ensuring legibility. The stately text and stillness of the images give the book a solemn air that is leavened with, first, “a midnight snack” of Lucky Charms and then a dream balloon flight that takes a brown-skinned child with long puffy hair over a sea of “pink and purple clouds.”
This will have young readers hoping to stay up for a glimpse of “colors unseen.” (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7992-6
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender...
A polar-bear parent speaks poetically of love for a child.
A genderless adult and cub travel through the landscapes of an arctic year. Each of the softly rendered double-page paintings has a very different feel and color palette as the pair go through the seasons, walking through wintry ice and snow and green summer meadows, cavorting in the blue ocean, watching whales, and playing beside musk oxen. The rhymes of the four-line stanzas are not forced, as is the case too often in picture books of this type: “When cold, winter winds / blow the leaves far and wide, / You’ll cross the great icebergs / with me by your side.” On a dark, snowy night, the loving parent says: “But for now, cuddle close / while the stars softly shine. // I’ll always be yours, / and you’ll always be mine.” As the last illustration shows the pair curled up for sleep, young listeners will be lulled to sweet dreams by the calm tenor of the pictures and the words. While far from original, this timeless theme is always in demand, and the combination of delightful illustrations and poetry that scans well make this a good choice for early-childhood classrooms, public libraries, and one-on-one home read-alouds.
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender restrictions. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68010-070-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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