Excellent and absolutely necessary.
A comic-book primer on anxiety.
In this follow-up to the remarkable Consent (For Kids!) (2019), a variety of cartoon characters learn what anxiety is, how it can affect the body and mind, and how to manage or even overcome it. Anxiety is depicted as a lumpy gray blob, like unappetizing oatmeal with eyes and the occasional limb, but isn’t demonized. At first readers learn that “Anxiety can alert us to a threat,” as the blob helpfully yells, “Look out!” while pointing at a sign labeled “Danger.” Brian continues: “But it can also feel uncomfortable,” as a child gets stuck in the blob. The brain also shows up as a character, a strangely endearing figure that talks back but can also be fooled. This entertaining, appealing, and friendly guide will be immensely helpful for readers of all ages, and it succeeds in being simple, direct, and clear without a hint of condescension. In the grayscale art with pops of yellow, child characters are depicted with various skin tones and hairstyles; one uses a wheelchair. Brian encourages readers to work hard to confront their anxieties, without assigning blame or fault if they can’t, and the concrete, practical tips offered are invaluable. Despite the serious topic, it’s also consistently funny, with fears both familiar and ridiculous presented in similarly arch tones.
Excellent and absolutely necessary. (Graphic nonfiction. 6-10)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-49519-6
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
Science at its best: informative and gross.
Why not? Because “IT’S FULL OF GERMS.”
Of course, Ben-Barak rightly notes, so is everything else—from your socks to the top of Mount Everest. Just to demonstrate, he invites readers to undertake an exploratory adventure (only partly imaginary): First touch a certain seemingly blank spot on the page to pick up a microbe named Min, then in turn touch teeth, shirt, and navel to pick up Rae, Dennis, and Jake. In the process, readers watch crews of other microbes digging cavities (“Hey kid, brush your teeth less”), spreading “lovely filth,” and chowing down on huge rafts of dead skin. For the illustrations, Frost places dialogue balloons and small googly-eyed cartoon blobs of diverse shape and color onto Rundgren’s photographs, taken using a scanning electron microscope, of the fantastically rugged surfaces of seemingly smooth paper, a tooth, textile fibers, and the jumbled crevasses in a belly button. The tour concludes with more formal introductions and profiles for Min and the others: E. coli, Streptococcus, Aspergillus niger, and Corynebacteria. “Where will you take Min tomorrow?” the author asks teasingly. Maybe the nearest bar of soap.
Science at its best: informative and gross. (Informational picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-17536-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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