This is more than just a book about making and engineering: Make an excellent choice to add this to the shelves.
Follow along as a child makes a spaceship, a friend, and a difference in her community.
“Ask yourself this question in the morning when you wake: / in a world of possibilities, today, what will you make?” Upon waking up, a young girl uses her imagination and things she has at home to make a tower, a drum set, and a spaceship. When she ventures outside, she makes a new friend. Working together, they make a lemonade stand and then make a donation to the local park. Finally, they make a choice to help more in order to make a difference in their community. Howes speaks to readers in rhyming verse about the many things they can make, intentionally repeating the verb throughout. Including themes of creativity, imagination, music, engineering, relationships, economics, and community service, she creates a powerful message about making choices to be proud of. Vukovic uses mixed media, including watercolors and crayon, to create lively, striking illustrations. The pictures capture a child’s imagination and how ordinary things can be made into something extraordinary. Together the text and the illustrations create an excellent read that will empower readers to reflect on their own lives and make a change or two or three. The unnamed protagonist has brown skin and long, dark braids; her friend presents white.
This is more than just a book about making and engineering: Make an excellent choice to add this to the shelves. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5124-9802-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Carolrhoda
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions.
Ellis, known for her illustrations for Colin Meloy’s Wildwood series, here riffs on the concept of “home.”
Shifting among homes mundane and speculative, contemporary and not, Ellis begins and ends with views of her own home and a peek into her studio. She highlights palaces and mansions, but she also takes readers to animal homes and a certain famously folkloric shoe (whose iconic Old Woman manages a passel of multiethnic kids absorbed in daring games). One spread showcases “some folks” who “live on the road”; a band unloads its tour bus in front of a theater marquee. Ellis’ compelling ink and gouache paintings, in a palette of blue-grays, sepia and brick red, depict scenes ranging from mythical, underwater Atlantis to a distant moonscape. Another spread, depicting a garden and large building under connected, transparent domes, invites readers to wonder: “Who in the world lives here? / And why?” (Earth is seen as a distant blue marble.) Some of Ellis’ chosen depictions, oddly juxtaposed and stripped of any historical or cultural context due to the stylized design and spare text, become stereotypical. “Some homes are boats. / Some homes are wigwams.” A sailing ship’s crew seems poised to land near a trio of men clad in breechcloths—otherwise unidentified and unremarked upon.
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6529-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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