This latest addition to the Engelpuppen Dollies series offers a celebration of celebrations.
Leech (The Dollies Put on a Play, 2014, etc.) offers a work that serves as both a picture book for children and an international look-book for doll collectors. It continues the format established in her previous book: color photographs of costumed dolls on custom sets, with all the details—from the hairdos to the props—inviting close study. The dolls all look like young children, carefully costumed and coiffed to match their countries of origin. Each spread depicts a celebration particular to a single country or region—one for each month of the year, plus New Year’s Day. The text provides a caption for each photograph, offering a short description of the holiday at hand. It covers the Chinese New Year, Brazilian Carnival, Japan’s Doll Festival (or Hinamatsuri), Australia and New Zealand’s ANZAC Day, and France’s Bastille Day, among others. For some holidays, a photographic backdrop helps create the air of an authentic location in the Outback, the Irish countryside or London. But readers may wonder about the author’s choice to present the dolls as residents of each locale, when a close look at their faces reveals serious limits to their diversity—take away the clothes, the hair, and the skin tone, and they all simply look like Caucasian toddlers. The costumes, settings and props are all exquisite. However, the author clearly paid less attention to details in the text itself. For example, the book incorrectly claims that Brazil’s Carnival is celebrated “forty days before Easter”; it’s actually celebrated up to six days prior to Ash Wednesday, which is 46 days before Easter. Less important, but misleading, is the assignment of Chinese New Year and Carnival to months in which they don’t always take place—Chinese New Year will be in February in 2015, for example.
A children’s book that’s strong on beauty, but a bit weak on facts and authentic diversity.
Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-0984913398
Page Count: 34
Publisher: The Home Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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