Family ties, cultural traditions, and a can-do spirit cooked into one sweet story.
Maria Lili gets a lesson in resourcefulness from her grandmother Mama Ana.
Every Saturday at her grandparents’ home, Maria Lili, a young girl living in Colombia, looks forward to eating a traditional stew known as sancocho. One Saturday, Papa Angelino announces that there is no money to purchase the ingredients needed for the sancocho; all they have is a dozen eggs. Undaunted, Mama Ana packs the eggs into a basket, and off she goes to the market with Maria Lili in tow. Young readers will be awed by Mama Ana’s bargaining, bartering, and haggling skills as she gathers all the essentials: plantain, cassava, carrots, corn, tomatoes, onion, garlic, cumin, cilantro, and chicken. Maria Lili even gets a spinning top to round off the acquisitions. Back at home, the family prepares the dish together and savors the meal before taking their siesta. Sunny, warm watercolor illustrations enhance the engaging text, beautifully capturing what could be any small Andean town in Colombia. Young readers will want to keep track of Maria Lili’s white dog, who is never mentioned but always visible. At the end of the book, the author has included her own family recipe for sancocho. All characters present White.
Family ties, cultural traditions, and a can-do spirit cooked into one sweet story. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-82555-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Square Fish
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This multigenerational snuggle will encourage the sharing of old memories and the creation of new ones.
Hill and Bobbiesi send a humungous hug from grandmothers to their granddaughters everywhere.
Delicate cartoon art adds details to the rhyming text showing multigenerational commonalities. “You and I are alike in such wonderful ways. / You will see more and more as you grow” (as grandmother and granddaughter enjoy the backyard together); “I wobbled uncertainly just as you did / whenever I tried something new” (as a toddler takes first steps); “And if a bad dream woke me up in the night, / I snuggled up with my lovey too” (grandmother kisses granddaughter, who clutches a plush narwhal). Grandmother-granddaughter pairs share everyday joys like eating ice cream, dancing “in the rain,” and making “up silly games.” Although some activities skew stereotypically feminine (baking, yoga), a grandmother helps with a quintessential volcano experiment (this pair presents black, adding valuable STEM representation), another cheers on a young wheelchair athlete (both present Asian), and a third, wearing a hijab, accompanies her brown-skinned granddaughter on a peace march, as it is “important to speak out for what you believe.” The message of unconditional love is clear throughout: “When you need me, I’ll be there to listen and care. / There is nothing that keeps us apart.” The finished book will include “stationery…for a special letter from Grandma to you!”
This multigenerational snuggle will encourage the sharing of old memories and the creation of new ones. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0623-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy.
Robo-parents Diode and Lugnut present daughter Cathode with a new little brother—who requires, unfortunately, some assembly.
Arriving in pieces from some mechanistic version of Ikea, little Flange turns out to be a cute but complicated tyke who immediately falls apart…and then rockets uncontrollably about the room after an overconfident uncle tinkers with his basic design. As a squad of helpline techies and bevies of neighbors bearing sludge cake and like treats roll in, the cluttered and increasingly crowded scene deteriorates into madcap chaos—until at last Cath, with help from Roomba-like robodog Sprocket, stages an intervention by whisking the hapless new arrival off to a backyard workshop for a proper assembly and software update. “You’re such a good big sister!” warbles her frazzled mom. Wiesner’s robots display his characteristic clean lines and even hues but endearingly look like vaguely anthropomorphic piles of random jet-engine parts and old vacuum cleaners loosely connected by joints of armored cable. They roll hither and thither through neatly squared-off panels and pages in infectiously comical dismay. Even the end’s domestic tranquility lasts only until Cathode spots the little box buried in the bigger one’s packing material: “TWINS!” (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at 52% of actual size.)
A retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-544-98731-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
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