An empathetic picture book about being a little bit different.
Unlike the other kids he knows, Lucas does not like birthday parties: He finds them chaotic and loud and overwhelming.
Lucas wishes that he could like parties the way that all of his friends seem to instead of just standing in the corner and watching. The next time he receives a party invitation, he decides to go and to be extra brave. When he gets to the party, a girl offers him a temporary tattoo. He takes it even though he finds it “slimy and sticky” and altogether unpleasant. He then gets into the bounce house, where he is “bumped right and banged left.” He even tries to be in the party photo, but the flash hurts his eyes. Finally, in frustration, he crawls under the table—where he meets a girl named Kate who also doesn’t like birthday parties. Kate tells him that hers are small and quiet, with only a few friends. Lucas realizes that he does like birthday parties—he just likes ones that are a little different than what you would expect. The protagonist’s plight is explored with empathy and clarity. However, it is not clear until the end that Lucas is being brave because he is struggling to plan his own party, which makes the book’s final pages feel disconnected from the main storyline. Lucas has very light brown skin, and Kate is pale. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An empathetic picture book about being a little bit different. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-80129-010-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Welbeck Children's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
Safe to creep on by.
Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.
In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.
Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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