Loving—but a bit puzzling.
A birthday tribute from mother to child.
Second-person point of view aligns readers with the direct address to “you” as a maternal voice recalls pregnancy, the birth of her child, and early childhood milestones, then anticipates the future. Opening and closing illustrations of an unmentioned, semianthropomorphic cat and dog detract from the interaction of words and pictures, since their relationship to the narrative is unclear. The opening text reads, “Once a year, / every year, a special day comes around.” Readers may wonder why the illustrations accompanying those lines are of a cat holding a candle and then a dog scratching its ear. In the third spread, however, a picture of a full-term fetus curled up against a womblike, rounded background plainly evokes the text’s statement about “wondering when you were going to come out of my tummy.” Other spreads feature the baby (who, like its mother, has dark hair and peachy skin) at various stages of development: nursing, learning to crawl, and then walking and running. Spare text, translated from Japanese, is loving and celebratory, while soft illustrations with minimal backgrounds provide an ideal aesthetic match. When the text shifts from concrete representations of the baby’s development to say “One day you will fly away,” the art offers a literal interpretation and shows the child flying against a blue background, which seems out of step with the real-world mother and child depiction.
Loving—but a bit puzzling. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-940842-20-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Museyon
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A successful swap from coconut tree to Christmas tree.
A Christmas edition of the beloved alphabet book.
The story starts off nearly identically to Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (1989), written by John Archambault and the late Bill Martin Jr, with the letters A, B, and C deciding to meet in the branches of a tree. This time, they’re attempting to scale a Christmas tree, not a coconut tree, and the letters are strung together like garland. A, B, and C are joined by the other letters, and of course they all “slip, slop, topple, plop!” right down the tree. At the bottom, they discover an assortment of gifts, all in a variety of shapes. As a team, the letters and presents organize themselves to get back up on the Christmas tree and get a star to the top. Holiday iterations of favorite tales often fall flat, but this take succeeds. The gifts are an easy way to reinforce another preschool concept—shapes—and the text uses just enough of the original to be familiar. The rhyming works, sticking to the cadence of the source material. The illustrations pay homage to the late Lois Ehlert’s, featuring the same bold block letters, though they lack some of the whimsy and personality of the original. Otherwise, everything is similarly brightly colored and simply drawn. Those familiar with the classic will be drawn to this one, but newcomers can enjoy it on its own.
A successful swap from coconut tree to Christmas tree. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781665954761
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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