Alluring, wordless enchantment.
Many visual stories play out during the night, between the time that a child falls asleep and then awakens.
This winner of the 2015 Silent Book Contest at the Bologna Book Fair may be wordless, but it overflows with stories. It demands that its viewers take their time going through the pages—and then going through them again. The beginning is simple: a light-skinned child falls asleep as an adult woman reads from a book whose cover sports stylized, anthropomorphic animals cavorting around a bonfire. Over several successive pages, the scene pans steadily outward—as with a wide-lens camera—so viewers see the child’s home situated in an urban neighborhood, and then more and more of that neighborhood. Against a backdrop of a starry sky, windows and rooftops of buildings reveal the child’s caregivers embracing, a nurse and patients in a hospital, an artist at an easel, and much more. As the angle widens, more characters emerge, and the initial stories continue. Art emerges on the easel; a crying baby finally sleeps; creatures resembling the bedtime book’s characters leave the city and paddle away on a long boat whose brilliant orange-and-gold pattern matches the sleeping child’s bedspread. Before the sophisticated, mixed-media artwork returns to the cityscapes, there are several joyous, vividly colored pages showing the creatures celebrating the night and the ensuing daybreak.
Alluring, wordless enchantment. (Picture book. 4-9)Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4521-6599-8
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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