A warm story of heritage, and the anxieties and rewards around change.
A young Irish immigrant to the United States adapts her traditions to a new land.
In mid-19th-century Ireland, Jack is a “sly spirit,” a prankster, deterred from entering a house by a carved turnip face lit by a glowing coal placed in the window. Lila and her two younger siblings journey with their Ma to join their Da in an unnamed American city, ca. 1850. The urban landscape is very different from their green fields, and the younger children are anxious about maintaining traditions around Halloween (an Irish festival import). Ma assures Lila that she’ll still “bake colcannon and barmbrack” (though as the recipe at the end confirms, colcannon is not baked). But, alas, there are no turnips to be had. At an open-air market, Lila quickly finds a friend, olive-skinned Julia—and an idea for a turnip substitute. She explains Irish Halloween to Julia, inviting her to participate. Julia explains the edibility of pumpkin seeds (and says that the stringy pumpkin “guts” can be turned into pie, though actually, they can’t). The younger children dress in sheets to scare Jack away (trick-or-treating will develop later). There is no recipe for barmbrack, a sweet Irish tea bread, more complicated than colcannon. The appealingly simple but realistic illustrations, featuring light-skinned, redheaded Lila and her family, are alight with autumnal color and replete with details of tenement life.
A warm story of heritage, and the anxieties and rewards around change. (history, recipe) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780807566633
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Not enough tricks to make this a treat.
Another holiday title (How To Catch the Easter Bunny by Adam Wallace, illustrated by Elkerton, 2017) sticks to the popular series’ formula.
Rhyming four-line verses describe seven intrepid trick-or-treaters’ efforts to capture the witch haunting their Halloween. Rhyming roadblocks with toolbox is an acceptable stretch, but too often too many words or syllables in the lines throw off the cadence. Children familiar with earlier titles will recognize the traps set by the costume-clad kids—a pulley and box snare, a “Tunnel of Tricks.” Eventually they accept her invitation to “floss, bump, and boogie,” concluding “the dance party had hit the finale at last, / each dancing monster started to cheer! / There’s no doubt about it, we have to admit: / This witch threw the party of the year!” The kids are diverse, and their costumes are fanciful rather than scary—a unicorn, a dragon, a scarecrow, a red-haired child in a lab coat and bow tie, a wizard, and two space creatures. The monsters, goblins, ghosts, and jack-o'-lanterns, backgrounded by a turquoise and purple night sky, are sufficiently eerie. Still, there isn’t enough originality here to entice any but the most ardent fans of Halloween or the series. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Not enough tricks to make this a treat. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72821-035-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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