Inspiring and delicious.
An eccentric elderly Chinese woman keeps a garden on the roof of her building, enriching the lives of everyone around her.
Granny, who lives in a busy city in southwest China, visits the market but takes only the leftover produce no one wants. She rushes up the stairs to the roof, feeds her chickens with the damaged vegetables, and composts the rest. She tends to her many plants and vegetables, her “gorgeous, chubby veggie children,” each with distinct personalities (eggplants are “quite shy,” while "hot-tempered" chili peppers “quarrel all the time”). Colored-pencil drawings capture Granny’s vivacious energy in a variety of compositions, while stylized human forms with no necks and solid bodies create whimsy. Translated from Chinese, the poetic text, which sometimes rhymes, is full of rich sensory imagery and vocabulary (“cucumbers drizzled with fragrant vinegar, / Tofu stewed with wood ear mushroom”), though some phrasing is awkward (“Who’s over there, crying and throwing a fit?”). Granny is a role model for sure, but such a self-actualized elderly character may not resonate with young readers. Nevertheless, her enthusiasm is contagious as she grows her food, cooks up a storm for her family and neighbors, and finally sends everyone home with a “pre-filled reusable bag” of healthy food.
Inspiring and delicious. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781646147014
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Levine Querido
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A silly snack guaranteed to satisfy the funny bone; kids will eat it up and ask for more.
In this droll tale, ostensibly straightforward instructions are a recipe for absurdity.
To obtain the two slices of bread that a jelly sandwich calls for, a brown-skinned youngster named Frankie instructs readers to head to the store. But NOT to the bakery aisle! Instead, buy “one orange [traffic] cone, scuba flippers, and a yellow inner tube.” Using those items to fashion a duck disguise, you’ll score the bread from a brown-skinned elder feeding wildfowl in the park. And if the ducks see through your pretense, you might have to practice your “quack-cent.” Similar maneuvers are required to open the jelly jar: You’ll need peanuts, a playground with a “whirly-go-round,” and an elephant with a strong trunk grip. (But if the jar is carelessly opened upside down, you’ll get a “jellyphant.”) To spread the jelly, you must first scrub a dog in your bathtub. (Dip the clean tail in the jelly, then pet and praise the dog until it happily wags its tail over the bread slices.) Putting the slices together requires a knightly tournament, but cutting the sandwich, “the least complicated step of all,” involves training a hamster to ride a unicycle. The final pages propose an alternative (but just as outrageous) method and invite readers to think up their own ridiculous techniques. Burach’s scenarios are inventive and hilarious, while his exaggerated cartoon illustrations reinforce the delicious jokiness each step of the way.
A silly snack guaranteed to satisfy the funny bone; kids will eat it up and ask for more. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9781338877090
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
This lacks the information of other nonfiction titles and the pizzazz of April Pulley Sayre’s Go, Go, Grapes! (2012), but it...
The prolific Gibbons tackles fruits—how they grow, their parts, and what portions we eat.
Beginning with facts about perennial and annual fruits and how many servings children should aim for each day, the book then looks at how fruits can grow on plants, bushes, vines, and trees. Good vocabulary is introduced and defined along the way—botanist, pollination, cultivated. The middle of the book is taken up by individual looks at 13 different kinds of fruits that show cutaway views labeled with parts, the whole plant/bush/vine/tree, and some of the popular varieties—for grapes, golden muscat, red flame, and concord. This is followed by a discussion of growing seasons and climates, large farms versus backyard ones, harvesting fruit and getting it to market, and some other fruits that were not featured in the text, including star fruits, apricots, and persimmons. A final page lists more fruit facts and two websites (one for the United States, one for Canada) about food guidelines. The text sometimes gets lost in Gibbons’ busy and full pages, and while her illustrations are detailed and specific for each type of fruit, the watercolors won’t make mouths water.
This lacks the information of other nonfiction titles and the pizzazz of April Pulley Sayre’s Go, Go, Grapes! (2012), but it may be just the ticket before a school trip to a farm. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3204-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
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