While picking blackberries with his mother, a little boy is enticed by a blue butterfly and wanders away. His mother persuades Old Crow to find the child and begins describing her Angel Face to him. Old Crow begins looking for the child with dusty almonds for eyes, a mango sliver for a mouth, and hair like a rushing river, but Old Crow can only find a little boy with a face that is “plainer than a cricket.” Not wanting to return to the distraught woman empty-handed, he wakes the boy and leads him back to her. She immediately embraces the little boy, repeating her claims of his beauty. She tells Old Crow, “I knew you’d know it anyplace, my Angel’s Face.” The rhyming couplets and rich, descriptive language make the text as beautiful as the artwork swirling around it. Richly colored illustrations rendered in pastel on textured paper fill each double-paged spread. With a nod to the folk-art tradition, the paintings could stand alone from the text They are softer than Caldecott Medalist Diaz’s (Roadrunner’s Dance, 2000, etc.) usual work and a perfect accompaniment. A CD by the author-songwriter is included. A tribute to the unique beauty of every child and the special love of a mother for her son. (Picture book. 3-7)
Pub Date: April 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-689-83302-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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