The message professes that all bodies are beautiful, but the text fails at including all bodies.
This Q-and-A–style informational picture book explores the topics of privacy, consent, and self-esteem.
No matter their size, shape, or age, everyone holds their own feelings and values about their bodies. Although everyone has a body and every body is different, some people feel comfortable showing more parts of their bodies while others seek privacy. As a person’s body develops, their attitude, self-image, and needs may change. In her latest in the World Around Us series, Roberts (On Our Street: Our First Talk About Poverty, 2018, etc.) addresses introductory questions about modesty, changing rooms, setting boundaries, consent, body safety, developing self-esteem, and helping friends feel confident. Photographs and ink-and-watercolor illustrations of diverse, active young people accompany the conversational text. In the discussion about sex-segregated changing rooms and bathrooms, Roberts expresses the importance of gender-neutral restrooms for creating a safe space. However, this sidebar is the only mention of transgender people in the book, and cis-centrism can be felt throughout. Roberts’ language describing breastfeeding limits the activity to women, ignoring the fact that trans men and nonbinary people can and do give birth and nurse. Additionally, the section on puberty includes binary language about “boys’ bodies” and “girls’ bodies” that perpetuates the notion that hormones determine the kind of body a person has. For those feeling insecure, Roberts presents a perfunctory solution: “start by accepting yourself and loving yourself just the way you are.”
The message professes that all bodies are beautiful, but the text fails at including all bodies. (author’s note, resources) (Informational picture book. 7-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4598-2097-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
Preposterous situations and farcical sound-alike sentences will elicit groans and giggles.
Homophones in versatile parallel sentences create absurd scenarios.
The pattern is simple but endlessly funny: Two sentences, each illustrated, sound the same but are differentiated by their use of homophones. On the verso of the opening spread a cartoon restaurant scene shows a diner lifting a plate of spaghetti and meatballs to a waiter who removes a dark hair from the plate of noodles: “The hair came forth.” (Both figures have brown skin.) Opposite, the scene shows a race with a tortoise at the finish line while a hare trails the tortoise, a snake, and a snail: “The hare came fourth.” The humorous line drawings feature an array of humans, animals, and monsters and provide support and context to the sentences, however bizarre they may seem. New vocabulary is constantly introduced, as is the idea that spelling and punctuation can alter meaning. Some pairings get quite sophisticated; others are rather forced. “The barred man looted the establishment. / The bard man luted the establishment” stretches the concept, paralleling barred with bard as adjectives and looted with luted as verbs. The former is an orange-jumpsuited White prisoner in a cell; the other, a brown-skinned musician strumming a lute for a racially diverse group of dancers. Poetic license may allow for luted, though the word lute is glaringly missing from the detailed glossary.
Preposterous situations and farcical sound-alike sentences will elicit groans and giggles. (Informational picture book. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-72820-659-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A stimulating outing to the furthest reaches of our knowledge, certain to inspire deep thoughts.
From a Caldecott and Sibert honoree, an invitation to take a mind-expanding journey from the surface of our planet to the furthest reaches of the observable cosmos.
Though Chin’s assumption that we are even capable of understanding the scope of the universe is quixotic at best, he does effectively lead viewers on a journey that captures a sense of its scale. Following the model of Kees Boeke’s classic Cosmic View: The Universe in Forty Jumps (1957), he starts with four 8-year-old sky watchers of average height (and different racial presentations). They peer into a telescope and then are comically startled by the sudden arrival of an ostrich that is twice as tall…and then a giraffe that is over twice as tall as that…and going onward and upward, with ellipses at each page turn connecting the stages, past our atmosphere and solar system to the cosmic web of galactic superclusters. As he goes, precisely drawn earthly figures and features in the expansive illustrations give way to ever smaller celestial bodies and finally to glimmering swirls of distant lights against gulfs of deep black before ultimately returning to his starting place. A closing recap adds smaller images and additional details. Accompanying the spare narrative, valuable side notes supply specific lengths or distances and define their units of measure, accurately explain astronomical phenomena, and close with the provocative observation that “the observable universe is centered on us, but we are not in the center of the entire universe.”
A stimulating outing to the furthest reaches of our knowledge, certain to inspire deep thoughts. (afterword, websites, further reading) (Informational picture book. 8-10)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4623-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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