Day’s picture-book debut purports to encourage ingenuity, perseverance, and girls’ interest in STEM but falls short of its...
Their trash is her treasure, and she’ll prove its value to the naysayers in town.
Sylvia Samantha Wright seems to be the only person who sees the potential in discarded objects such as old pipes, overstock party hats, and half-rotten bananas. When skeptics comment on her habit of collecting junk, she doggedly says she’s “working on something.” However, when elderly Ezekiel Mather finally asks what she’s working on, she confesses that she doesn’t know. He encourages her, saying: “That’s the best part….The part before you know.” A series of townwide disasters gives Sylvia an opportunity to demonstrate how the junk she collects can be utilized in feats of engineering and problem-solving. Cartoonish line drawings with colorful, textural accents support the exaggerated silliness of the disasters, but the text’s humor somewhat tarnishes the sincerity of its empowering message. An unnecessarily wordy recurring punchline concerns an incompetent female mayor (no room for two intelligent female characters with agency in this town!). (It’s also a pretty homogeneous town; all the named characters are white, with only a few scattered characters of color in the occasional background.) Despite Sylvia’s refrain, “I’m working on something,” both text and illustrations avoid depicting her much-hyped problem-solving process by leapfrogging over it to the final results of her efforts.
Day’s picture-book debut purports to encourage ingenuity, perseverance, and girls’ interest in STEM but falls short of its potential. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-58536-400-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A good bet for the youngest bird-watchers.
Echoing the meter of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” Ward uses catchy original rhymes to describe the variety of nests birds create.
Each sweet stanza is complemented by a factual, engaging description of the nesting habits of each bird. Some of the notes are intriguing, such as the fact that the hummingbird uses flexible spider web to construct its cup-shaped nest so the nest will stretch as the chicks grow. An especially endearing nesting behavior is that of the emperor penguin, who, with unbelievable patience, incubates the egg between his tummy and his feet for up to 60 days. The author clearly feels a mission to impart her extensive knowledge of birds and bird behavior to the very young, and she’s found an appealing and attractive way to accomplish this. The simple rhymes on the left page of each spread, written from the young bird’s perspective, will appeal to younger children, and the notes on the right-hand page of each spread provide more complex factual information that will help parents answer further questions and satisfy the curiosity of older children. Jenkins’ accomplished collage illustrations of common bird species—woodpecker, hummingbird, cowbird, emperor penguin, eagle, owl, wren—as well as exotics, such as flamingoes and hornbills, are characteristically naturalistic and accurate in detail.
A good bet for the youngest bird-watchers. (author’s note, further resources) (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-2116-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard.
A grouchy sapling on a Christmas tree farm finds that there are better things than lights and decorations for its branches.
A Grinch among the other trees on the farm is determined never to become a sappy Christmas tree—and never to leave its spot. Its determination makes it so: It grows gnarled and twisted and needle-less. As time passes, the farm is swallowed by the suburbs. The neighborhood kids dare one another to climb the scary, grumpy-looking tree, and soon, they are using its branches for their imaginative play, the tree serving as a pirate ship, a fort, a spaceship, and a dragon. But in winter, the tree stands alone and feels bereft and lonely for the first time ever, and it can’t look away from the decorated tree inside the house next to its lot. When some parents threaten to cut the “horrible” tree down, the tree thinks, “Not now that my limbs are full of happy children,” showing how far it has come. Happily for the tree, the children won’t give up so easily, and though the tree never wished to become a Christmas tree, it’s perfectly content being a “trick or tree.” Martinez’s digital illustrations play up the humorous dichotomy between the happy, aspiring Christmas trees (and their shoppers) and the grumpy tree, and the diverse humans are satisfyingly expressive.
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7335-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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