An engaging tale for kids intrigued by significant mementos and their relationships to the past.
On a youngster’s eighth birthday, a note sparks a scavenger hunt for “common and uncommon things” in this illustrated children’s book.
The sun rises through the wood-framed window in a dimly lit green room. It is the unseen narrator’s eighth birthday, and the child is woken by the weight of the rucksack that sits at the end of the bed. A note in verse tucked in the rucksack prompts the narrator to search for “thingamajigs” for each of the eight years, with the promise that the scavenger hunt will help the child understand the poem. Spencer’s watercolor and pastel illustrations use flat space inventively. The muted skies, first-person point of view, natural landscapes, and objects whose sizes are proportional to their importance add an enchanting mystery to the narrator’s quest. Carr-Harris invites young readers to imagine themselves as the narrator, but the objects collected paint a more specific, less universal portrait. The narrator’s friend, the son of a “professor of divinity,” gives the child a Canaanite pottery fragment, and they discuss the meaning of civilization before moving on to Grandma for a photograph. A trip to the quarry yields a trilobite fossil—taking the narrator even further back in time. Blocks of text on each page deftly describe the flora of the neighborhood and the feeling of walking and meditating on the sensation of searching without knowing what you are looking for. Not every child will be riveted, but the promise of history in everyday objects will draw those interested in the echoes of the past. The resulting journey is leisurely, evocative, and without clear conclusions—but takes seriously the expanded capacity for the contemplation of time, history, and meaning that comes to youngsters as they get older.
An engaging tale for kids intrigued by significant mementos and their relationships to the past. (Ages 7-12)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-88590-976-1
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent.
Published in magazines, never seen since / Now resurrected for pleasure intense / Versified episodes numbering four / Featuring Marco, and Horton and more!
All of the entries in this follow-up to The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories (2011) involve a certain amount of sharp dealing. Horton carries a Kwuggerbug through crocodile-infested waters and up a steep mountain because “a deal is a deal”—and then is cheated out of his promised share of delicious Beezlenuts. Officer Pat heads off escalating, imagined disasters on Mulberry Street by clubbing a pesky gnat. Marco (originally met on that same Mulberry Street) concocts a baroque excuse for being late to school. In the closer, a smooth-talking Grinch (not the green sort) sells a gullible Hoobub a piece of string. In a lively introduction, uber-fan Charles D. Cohen (The Seuss, The Whole Seuss, and Nothing but the Seuss, 2002) provides publishing histories, places characters and settings in Seussian context, and offers insights into, for instance, the origin of “Grinch.” Along with predictably engaging wordplay—“He climbed. He grew dizzy. His ankles grew numb. / But he climbed and he climbed and he clum and he clum”—each tale features bright, crisply reproduced renditions of its original illustrations. Except for “The Hoobub and the Grinch,” which has been jammed into a single spread, the verses and pictures are laid out in spacious, visually appealing ways.
Fans both young and formerly young will be pleased—100 percent. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-38298-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
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There’s lots to see and do in this big city.
A set of panoramic views of the urban environment: inside and out, above and belowground, at street level and high overhead.
Thanks to many flaps, pull tabs, spinners, and sliders, viewers can take peeks into stores and apartments, see foliage change through the seasons in a park, operate elevators, make buildings rise and come down, visit museums and municipal offices, take in a film, join a children’s parade, marvel as Christmas decorations go up—even look in on a wedding and a funeral. Balicevic populates each elevated cartoon view with dozens of tiny but individualized residents diverse in age, skin tone, hair color and style, dress, and occupation. He also adds such contemporary touches as an electrical charging station for cars, surveillance cameras, smartphones, and fiber optic cables. Moreover, many flaps conceal diagrammatic views of infrastructure elements like water treatment facilities and sources of electrical power or how products ranging from plate glass and paper to bread, cheese, and T-shirts are manufactured (realistically, none of the workers in the last are white). Baumann’s commentary is largely dispensable, but she does worthily observe on the big final pop-up spread that cities are always changing—often, nowadays, becoming more environmentally friendly.
There’s lots to see and do in this big city. (Informational novelty. 6-9)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 979-1-02760-079-3
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Twirl/Chronicle
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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