With sharp shapes and a riot of color, the prolific Gomi’s simple premise should spark young imaginations.
The world’s diversity is depicted in a series of colorful, geometrical pictures.
The bottom third of each double-page spread shows the same serene blue ocean and a little long-haired child in red overalls staring out at it, facing away from readers. Three white gulls fly overhead as the child wonders, “What is over the ocean?” On progressive pages the child imagines the multiple answers to that question: scores of ships filling the water, big farms and tall city buildings (both in rainbow colors), playfully leaping animals, a town of tightly packed little houses, the faces of children of many races and ethnicities, and then those children frolicking on a variety of fair attractions. “Is there night over the ocean?” the child muses, as the dark sky over the water fills with stars in curlicue patterns. The narrator then imagines a night-lit city made entirely of ice, a beach on the opposite side of the ocean that mirrors the one readers see, then a parallel someone standing next to a rainbow and also staring at the ocean…or staring back at the narrator? In the final picture, the child still stares at the ocean while a second, almost identical child (clad in green overalls) sails high into the sky inside the basket of a big striped balloon. The narrating child never moves, but the image is saved from stasis by both the changing view and the child’s long, wind-swept dark hair blowing to the side.
With sharp shapes and a riot of color, the prolific Gomi’s simple premise should spark young imaginations. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: May 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4521-4515-0
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender...
A polar-bear parent speaks poetically of love for a child.
A genderless adult and cub travel through the landscapes of an arctic year. Each of the softly rendered double-page paintings has a very different feel and color palette as the pair go through the seasons, walking through wintry ice and snow and green summer meadows, cavorting in the blue ocean, watching whales, and playing beside musk oxen. The rhymes of the four-line stanzas are not forced, as is the case too often in picture books of this type: “When cold, winter winds / blow the leaves far and wide, / You’ll cross the great icebergs / with me by your side.” On a dark, snowy night, the loving parent says: “But for now, cuddle close / while the stars softly shine. // I’ll always be yours, / and you’ll always be mine.” As the last illustration shows the pair curled up for sleep, young listeners will be lulled to sweet dreams by the calm tenor of the pictures and the words. While far from original, this timeless theme is always in demand, and the combination of delightful illustrations and poetry that scans well make this a good choice for early-childhood classrooms, public libraries, and one-on-one home read-alouds.
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender restrictions. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68010-070-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Like its subject: full of bustling life yet peaceful.
Life buzzes in a community garden.
Surrounded by apartment buildings, this city garden gets plenty of human attention, but the book’s stars are the plants and insects. The opening spread shows a black child in a striped shirt sitting in a top-story window; the nearby trees and garden below reveal the beginnings of greenery that signal springtime. From that high-up view, the garden looks quiet—but it’s not. “Sleepy slugs / and garden snails / leave behind their silver trails. / Frantic teams of busy ants / scramble up the stems of plants”; and “In the earth / a single seed / sits beside a millipede. / Worms and termites / dig and toil / moving through the garden soil.” Sicuro zooms in too, showing a robin taller than a half-page; later, close-ups foreground flowers, leaves, and bugs while people (children and adults, a multiracial group) are crucial but secondary, sometimes visible only as feet. Watercolor illustrations with ink and charcoal highlights create a soft, warm, horticulturally damp environment. Scale and perspective are more stylized than literal. McCanna’s superb scansion never misses, incorporating lists of insects and plants (“Lacewings, gnats, / mosquitos, spiders, / dragonflies, and water striders / live among the cattail reeds, / lily pads, and waterweeds”) with description (“Sunlight warms the morning air. / Dewdrops shimmer / here and there”). Readers see more than gardeners do, such as rabbits stealing carrots and lettuce from garden boxes.
Like its subject: full of bustling life yet peaceful. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1797-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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