Though wonky in places, this book makes important points about mitigating anxiety in young children.
Lucy was once a happy and cheerful girl, but shortly after she started school, she often found herself worrying…a lot.
Lucy’s new withdrawn behavior concerns her grandmother. Lucy and Nonna talk to her teacher, who assures Lucy that everyone makes mistakes. Later, Nonna recommends that Lucy help her father, a chef, in the kitchen. With best friend Evan’s help, Lucy becomes quite a good helper. When a food critic comes to her father’s restaurant and a nervous Lucy drops his lemon tart, her father and Evan marvel at the artistic beauty of the broken tart on the miraculously intact plate. (The critic judges it “highly original.”) The illustrations are charming and particularly creative in an early spread in which the children go from standing beside a swimming pool to a page two-thirds the normal size on which Lucy stands, uninterested and apart from the other children, who swim and dive into the pool. Puzzlingly, this clever design does not carry on throughout. Perhaps it’s the translation from the Dutch, but this section reads awkwardly. When the instructor asks, “Who wants to jump off the diving board?” the students cheer, “Yippee!” It’s an odd response and one that children will likely point out. A concluding poem from Nonna to Lucy about making mistakes feels unnecessary. Lucy, Nonna, and Lucy’s father present White; Evan is a child of color.
Though wonky in places, this book makes important points about mitigating anxiety in young children. (author's note) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-60537-579-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clavis
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet and endearing feathered migration.
A relationship between a Latina grandmother and her mixed-race granddaughter serves as the frame to depict the ruby-throated hummingbird migration pattern.
In Granny’s lap, a girl is encouraged to “keep still” as the intergenerational pair awaits the ruby-throated hummingbirds with bowls of water in their hands. But like the granddaughter, the tz’unun—“the word for hummingbird in several [Latin American] languages”—must soon fly north. Over the next several double-page spreads, readers follow the ruby-throated hummingbird’s migration pattern from Central America and Mexico through the United States all the way to Canada. Davies metaphorically reunites the granddaughter and grandmother when “a visitor from Granny’s garden” crosses paths with the girl in New York City. Ray provides delicately hashed lines in the illustrations that bring the hummingbirds’ erratic flight pattern to life as they travel north. The watercolor palette is injected with vibrancy by the addition of gold ink, mirroring the hummingbirds’ flashing feathers in the slants of light. The story is supplemented by notes on different pages with facts about the birds such as their nest size, diet, and flight schedule. In addition, a note about ruby-throated hummingbirds supplies readers with detailed information on how ornithologists study and keep track of these birds.
A sweet and endearing feathered migration. (bibliography, index) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0538-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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