A beautifully illustrated Afrocentric story that inspires as it informs.
Macy proposes to celebrate African heritage in a very visible way.
A little brown-skinned Black girl with two Afro puffs, Macy greets her teacher, Miss Brown, and compliments her dress. Miss Brown, who is also Black, identifies the fabric as typical of West Africa. When Macy suggests that her classmates each wear an outfit from a different African country, Miss Brown loves the idea. The following week, Miss Brown points to Kenya on an African map as Naomi models a Kenyan Masai dress made with red shuka cloth and colorful beaded necklaces. Macy’s classmates wear Ghanaian Ashanti kente cloth; Angolan, Namibian and Ethiopian garb; a Nigerian ceremonial outfit, the agbada; a Rwandan Tutsi warrior’s clothing; and a Cameroonian elephant mask with matching outfit. Macy arrives late with a special surprise that makes everyone smile. Freeman’s colorful, detailed illustrations represent children with different hairstyles and skin tones, including one with albinism. A richer story would have given the children personal connections with the countries they represent. But even lacking that, this wonderful display of traditional clothing encourages readers to appreciate diversity within Africa and will spark interest in learning about the origins of these beautiful, colorful fabrics and the people who wear them, since clothing expresses culture in so many ways. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A beautifully illustrated Afrocentric story that inspires as it informs. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-913175-18-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Cassava Republic Press
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
Provocative and guaranteed to spark awareness of children’s rights.
From the bold opening assertion, “I am a child with eyes, hands, a voice, a heart, and rights,” to the urgent closing plea, “We need our rights to be respected now—today,” this primer invites young readers to think about their universal rights as children as embodied in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
An engaging child narrator explains that kids have a right to: a name, a family, a country, food and water, shelter, medicines and help if their bodies don’t “work as well as other children’s.” Kids have a right to go to school, to refuse to work, to express themselves, to play and create, to be protected from disasters and wars, to be free from violence, and to breathe air “pure as the blue sky.” These rights apply to all children regardless of gender, race, size, wealth or country if they live in one of the 193 countries ratifying the Convention. Readers may be surprised, however, to discover the United States is not one of these countries. Engagingly naive acrylic illustrations spanning double-page spreads evoke Chagall in their use of flat patterns, swirling lines, vibrant hues, and symbolic, powerful dream-like images of the repertoire of children’s rights.
Provocative and guaranteed to spark awareness of children’s rights. (note on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child; list of states party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child) (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55498-149-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Trite text and overworked art detract from an interesting concept.
Each month of the year is represented by a full moon, one of its nicknames in the Northern Hemisphere, and some notes about seasonal changes during that month.
“Let me tell you a story about the moon. That bright, round moon up there is called a Full Moon….People long ago kept track of the seasons by giving each full moon a special name.” A man with light-brown skin sits with a small, dark-haired, even lighter-skinned girl in his lap, open book before them. Behind them, a stylized version of a moonlit night sets the stage for more pages of full moons. The illustrations use strong, dark lines filled in with high-contrast blocks of color. A cursory glance invites a second look; a second look brings a discomfiting sense of the uncanny, as animals, plants, and humans are generally depicted in that nether world between realism and fantasy. A double-page spread of children gathering berries by moonlight is particularly eerie. The text is also a garbled mix of poetic imagery and snippets of natural science: “Thunder and lightning storms roll through the plains, providing strength for the farmer’s crops to grow.” What does that mean? Most pages keep the full moon gender-free, but it is given a male pronoun during April—as is November’s hardworking beaver. Most problematic of all is that there is no information about the “people long ago” or the culture or cultures from which these various names originated.
Trite text and overworked art detract from an interesting concept. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-58536-965-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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