Neither exactly a book about colors nor exactly a book about seasons, this is a reminder to slow down, savor the present,...
Readers experience the colors and sensations of the world through the varying moods and observations of one little girl.
A golden-skinned child with straight black hair frolics in the water, noticing that the sea looks blue from a distance. “But when I hold the water in my hands, it’s as clear as glass.” She ponders hidden colors, from the orange of the yolk nestled inside an egg to the red blood that is always pumping through her body, whether she is calm and quiet or running across a playground filled with ethnically diverse children in school uniforms. Her mood soars as she imagines riding a boat over waving yellow grass but comes thudding down to earth as she disembarks from her school bus beside said grassy field, stepping into the cold grayness of a rainy day. The exuberant joys of spring and summer, the return of autumn, and the natural slowing down of winter’s return mark the passage of time. The poetic language pairs well with the acrylic-and-Photoshop paintings. Most of the artwork conveys movement and feeling rather than being meticulously literal—such as when the girl muses about the color of blue whales and impressionistic dabs of darker blue form the flukes of a whale beneath her—with the startling exception of the detailed, highly realistic spread of crows taking flight.
Neither exactly a book about colors nor exactly a book about seasons, this is a reminder to slow down, savor the present, notice small details, and relish childlike wonder. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2851-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
BLOG
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
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
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)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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