An imaginative and visual pleasure as well as confirmation that spaceships don’t beep and blink but sound like spring...
Young Sam knows that robots live on their own planet in outer space.
Timmers, a Belgian, gives colors of tooth-cracking radiance to his comical characters, setting them against fields of luminous white. Sam, a little dark-haired white boy, is nuts about robots. He thinks they live on a faraway planet. His family pooh-poohs him: “You watch too much TV, son,” says his mother. Only the old radio—the kind that sort of looks like a robot’s head—agrees: “Everybody knows that!” So Sam sets about building a robot who will understand him, a wonderful contraption made out of a vacuum cleaner, garden tools, lamp stands, a fan, and guess what for a head? Eh voilà—Franky: Franky who plays robots with Sam, Franky who speaks in what looks like molecular models, Franky who is a barrel of fun until one day he stands looking out the window at the sky. That night, an army of Frankys arrives in a spaceship to take him home. One could mine this book for subtexts—imaginary friends, the creator of life having to let it go, and the simple truth that extraterrestrial beings are made out of Electrolux canisters—but its surface qualities are equally, if not more than, adequate for high entertainment purposes.
An imaginative and visual pleasure as well as confirmation that spaceships don’t beep and blink but sound like spring cleaning. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-9272-7193-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Gecko Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
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
An invitation to wonder, imagine and look at everything (humans included) in a new way.
A young boy sees things a little differently than others.
Noah can see patterns in the dust when it sparkles in the sunlight. And if he puts his nose to the ground, he can smell the “green tang of the ants in the grass.” His most favorite thing of all, however, is to read. Noah has endless curiosity about how and why things work. Books open the door to those answers. But there is one question the books do not explain. When the wind comes whistling by, where does it go? Noah decides to find out. In a chase that has a slight element of danger—wind, after all, is unpredictable—Noah runs down streets, across bridges, near a highway, until the wind lifts him off his feet. Cowman’s gusty wisps show each stream of air turning a different jewel tone, swirling all around. The ribbons gently bring Noah home, setting him down under the same thinking tree where he began. Did it really happen? Worthington’s sensitive exploration leaves readers with their own set of questions and perhaps gratitude for all types of perspective. An author’s note mentions children on the autism spectrum but widens to include all who feel a little different.
An invitation to wonder, imagine and look at everything (humans included) in a new way. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-60554-356-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Redleaf Lane
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
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