Akley aims at complexity, but achieves incoherence. (Picture book. 5-7)
A new sprout questions the meaning of life.
Sweet Pea, a sprout unfurling on a sunny day, immediately questions who she is and why she exists, expressing distress at her confusion. A bumblebee happens along and spouts philosophy at Sweet Pea, supposedly exploring the meaning of life. Akley attempts verse, but most rhymes are poor, nonexistent or rarely scan, reading instead as prose without line breaks. But the deepest problem is that the bumblebee’s monologues are unintelligible. Cryptically smashing together bits of classical philosophy, Akley produces long-winded litanies devoid of meaning. Certain snippets may be rooted in real discourse but are unfathomable. The unattractive, cereal box style illustrations have googly eyes and no depth. And after all that philosophical nonsense, the answer to Sweet Pea’s question is painfully sacrificial: The meaning of her life is to be a cut flower in a vase after she ages and dies, to be a gift for someone else.
Akley aims at complexity, but achieves incoherence. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4327-0341-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
In The Palm Of Darkness ($21.00; May 1997; 192 pp.; 0-06-018703- 4): A Cuban writers's intensely imaginative portrait of the extremities of Haitian culture rings some fresh changes on the overfamiliar theme of intellectual arrogance humbled by its collision with ``elemental'' peasant wisdom. Montero subtly builds up a revealing contrast between Victor Griggs, a European herpetologist searching for the remaining specimens of an endangered species of amphibian, and his native guide Thierry Adrien's memories of his family's encounter with the island's ubiquitous spirits. This truly original novel is studded with surprises—not least of which is the concept of a species suddenly and entirely disappearing in a milieu where the living and the dead are known to mingle together more or less matter-of-factly. A refreshingly sophisticated treat. (Author tour)
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-06-018703-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1997
Seibold and Walsh (Olive, the Other Reindeer, 1997, etc.) don’t provide much for readers to hold on to in the thick glossy pages of this oddly imagined, computer-generated tale of few words. Chongo Chingi the penguin is sleeping and dreaming. He dreams he flies with geese, and glides by an airplane, meets a metamorphosing bat, goes off into an outer space filled with sea creatures, and wakes up to his own alarm clock. The loosely rhymed text has the random sense of dreams, or of children’s own stories. The amusing images are the rounded, metallic-looking forms that characterize these collaborators’ previous books. (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8118-2558-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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