Author Ortiz has a background in museums and making them more accessible, and in her work she makes a strong case for making...
A little girl steps into a piece of art and connects to a musician and artist from Hispaniola in a second book about the young girl’s introduction to different cultures (Sofi in the Magic, Musical Mural / Sofi y el mágico mural musical, 2015).
After Sofi is unable to create the color purple for art class, she leaves school frustrated. On her walk home, she finds a painter working in a nearby garden. Touching a painting, she finds herself meeting two important artists: Dominican Afro-Latin singer and composer Juan Luis Guerra and Haitian sculptor Guerlande Balan. Sofi helps Guerra finish the lyrics to a song and then makes a perfect purple to assist Balan with a statue. The book features blocks of text, English followed by Spanish, over mostly double-page spreads of Sofi’s adventure. While the story serves as a primer on some Haitian and Dominican terms and cultural touchstones, there’s not much to learn about Sofi herself, and the text doesn’t always rise to the occasion in either language. When she’s asked how she figured out how to make purple, Sofi says only and unsatisfyingly, “I guess I always knew. I just needed a little help from my friends.” What the book gets right is its advocacy for the power of art, even art that may seem out of reach at first.
Author Ortiz has a background in museums and making them more accessible, and in her work she makes a strong case for making those connections . (Bilingual picture book. 5-10)Pub Date: May 31, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-55885-883-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arte Público
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the...
An all-zombie-all-the-time zombiefest, featuring a bunch of grade-school kids, including protagonist Stink and his happy comrades.
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the streets in the time-honored stiff-armed, stiff-legged fashion. McDonald signals her intent on page one: “Stink and Webster were playing Attack of the Knitting Needle Zombies when Fred Zombie’s eye fell off and rolled across the floor.” The farce is as broad as the Atlantic, with enough spookiness just below the surface to provide the all-important shivers. Accompanied by Reynolds’ drawings—dozens of scene-setting gems with good, creepy living dead—McDonald shapes chapters around zombie motifs: making zombie costumes, eating zombie fare at school, reading zombie books each other to reach the one-million-minutes-of-reading challenge. When the zombie walk happens, it delivers solid zombie awfulness. McDonald’s feel-good tone is deeply encouraging for readers to get up and do this for themselves because it looks like so much darned fun, while the sub-message—that reading grows “strong hearts and minds,” as well as teeth and bones—is enough of a vital interest to the story line to be taken at face value.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5692-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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