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WHEN THE WIND CAME

Name: WHEN THE WIND CAME
Author: Jan Andrews
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0339-5

by Jan Andrews ; illustrated by Dorothy Leung ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 7, 2022

Memory, fear, despair, and ultimately hope blow through this quiet story of courageous resilience.

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The story of a natural disaster as remembered by a child.

Sentences that start with “I remember…” demonstrate the power of memory. What this brown-skinned child is remembering is a seemingly ordinary day on the family farm. The narrator’s parents work while they try to read. “I remember my baby brother / whimpering, / whimpering, / whimpering. / Every day, / every day, / every day.” Suddenly the wind comes, “blowing / harder / and harder / and harder.” The child and their family run for the root cellar and sit in darkness. The protagonist’s matter-of-fact declaration—“Our home was gone / when we came out”—speaks to their shock and despair. A third shift in the narrative arc is signaled by a change in the illustrations, from dark, foreboding images of a vast untamed prairie to light, playful images of the bubbles the child blows while washing dishes. This deceptively uncomplicated book offers a hopeful perspective on loss: Joy and laughter are possible even in the face of disaster. Leung’s painterly vistas and expressive faces complement Andrews’ lean poetic phrasing. The land and nature’s might are silent characters in the story. The reader is left pondering the narrator’s final words: “Those laughs didn’t change anything. / They made no difference. // Those laughs changed everything. They made all the difference in the world.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Memory, fear, despair, and ultimately hope blow through this quiet story of courageous resilience. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: June 7, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-5253-0339-5

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Kids Can

Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

- BOOK REVIEW
TO SEE THE STARS
by Jan Andrews ; illustrated by Tara Tidwell Bryan

- BOOK REVIEW
WHEN APPLES GREW NOSES AND WHITE HORSES FLEW
retold by Jan Andrews & illustrated by Dušan Petričić

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STORIES AT THE DOOR
by Jan Andrews & illustrated by Francis Blake

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CARPENTER'S HELPER

by Sybil Rosen ; illustrated by Camille Garoche ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2021

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.

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A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.

Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: March 16, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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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)