Bedtime fears? Meet your match in this tale of a cuddly, anthropomorphized darkness.
After being snubbed by the public, the Dark leaves.
It’s hard enough being the Dark without having to constantly hide from the general populace. After all, everyone’s afraid of the Dark, even a little red-haired boy who loves the sounds the crickets make. Taking the hint, the Dark leaves the world, and initially everyone rejoices. But soon, the boy misses the crickets’ songs, the owls, the bats, and the stars—which, his parents explain, were “gifts of the Dark.” So the boy takes off to find the Dark. Along the way he collects others who also wish to bring back those aspects of nighttime they miss, like a sense of mystery and night-blooming jasmine. The Dark and the world give one another a chance, and the boy learns to welcome and love the thing that scared him so much before. The visual pop between the velvety blue-black darkness and the canary yellow of daytime is one of the finer aspects of this gentle lesson in facing fears. Child readers with their own qualms about nighttime may find comfort in a Dark that hugs, smiles, and enfolds owls, stars, and flowers. All told, this is a decent companion to The Dark (2013) by Lemony Snicket, illustrated by Jon Klassen, or The Night Eater by Ana Juan (2004). The boy and his mother are light-skinned, his father presents Black, and other characters are racially diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Bedtime fears? Meet your match in this tale of a cuddly, anthropomorphized darkness. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6292-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Mixed-race children certainly deserve mirror books, but they also deserve excellent text and illustrations. This one misses...
This tan-skinned, freckle-faced narrator extols her own virtues while describing the challenges of being of mixed race.
Protagonist Lilly appears on the cover, and her voluminous curly, twirly hair fills the image. Throughout the rhyming narrative, accompanied by cartoonish digital illustrations, Lilly brags on her dark skin (that isn’t very), “frizzy, wild” hair, eyebrows, intellect, and more. Her five friends present black, Asian, white (one blonde, one redheaded), and brown (this last uses a wheelchair). This array smacks of tokenism, since the protagonist focuses only on self-promotion, leaving no room for the friends’ character development. Lilly describes how hurtful racial microaggressions can be by recalling questions others ask her like “What are you?” She remains resilient and says that even though her skin and hair make her different, “the way that I look / Is not all I’m about.” But she spends so much time talking about her appearance that this may be hard for readers to believe. The rhyming verse that conveys her self-celebration is often clumsy and forced, resulting in a poorly written, plotless story for which the internal illustrations fall far short of the quality of the cover image.
Mixed-race children certainly deserve mirror books, but they also deserve excellent text and illustrations. This one misses the mark on both counts. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63233-170-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Eifrig
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Fun, fun, fun all through the town!
This book’s gonna werk, werk, werk all through Pride Month and beyond.
Drag persona Lil Miss Hot Mess rewrites “The Wheels on the Bus” to create a fun, movement-filled, family-friendly celebration of drag. The text opens with the titular verse to establish the familiar song’s formulaic pattern: “The hips on the drag queen go SWISH, SWISH, SWISH… / ALL THROUGH THE TOWN!” Along the way, more and more drag queens join in the celebration. The unnamed queens proudly display a range of skin tones, sizes, and body modifications to create a diverse cast of realistic characters that could easily be spotted at a Pride event or on RuPaul’s Drag Race. The palette of both costumes and backgrounds is appropriately psychedelic, and there are plenty of jewels going “BLING, BLING, BLING.” Don’t tell the queens, but the flow is the book’s real star, because it encourages natural kinetic participation that will have groups of young readers giggling and miming along with the story. Libraries and bookshops hosting drag-queen storytimes will find this a popular choice, and those celebrating LGBTQ+ heritage will also find this a useful book for the pre-K crowd. Curious children unfamiliar with a drag queen may require a brief explanation, but the spectacle stands up just fine on its own platforms.
Fun, fun, fun all through the town! (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7624-6765-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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