A delightful (re)discovery.
In author/illustrator Greenwood’s picture-book reissue, a little boy creates a wild, willful toy.
One morning, a child (called only “the Maker”) wakes up and decides to craft a kite. When it’s finished, there’s no wind, and the boy must wait. After waiting several days, the wind picks up and the kite is airborne. It first lands in the blackberries, then in the pond. Mrs. Pinch, a neighbor, disapproves, but Mr. Crinkle, another local, offers a new word to describe the kite: “Ob stre per ous….It means naughty and hard to manage.” (The humans all present as White.) The Maker names the kite Obstreperous and gives it a frowning face; it flies higher and higher until the string snaps. The Maker is sad, but Obstreperous, now smiling, floats away, unfettered. The simple language makes good use of line breaks, as in the lines “The face of the Maker looked sad as his eyes followed the string / that went / nowhere,” arranged next to the downcast boy. These lend the work surprising emotional weight, particularly during its bittersweet ending. However, the illustrations make this book magical. Originally published in 1969, the book has a gratifyingly funky 20th-century look with a mix of line drawings, simple color washes, and doodlelike fills, all in soft, earthy tones, making it feel simultaneously familiar and fresh.
A delightful (re)discovery.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-944860-47-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Anthology Editions
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color.
Duncan wants to draw, but instead of crayons, he finds a stack of letters listing the crayons’ demands in this humorous tale.
Red is overworked, laboring even on holidays. Gray is exhausted from coloring expansive spaces (elephants, rhinos and whales). Black wants to be considered a color-in color, and Peach? He’s naked without his wrapper! This anthropomorphized lot amicably requests workplace changes in hand-lettered writing, explaining their work stoppage to a surprised Duncan. Some are tired, others underutilized, while a few want official titles. With a little creativity and a lot of color, Duncan saves the day. Jeffers delivers energetic and playful illustrations, done in pencil, paint and crayon. The drawings are loose and lively, and with few lines, he makes his characters effectively emote. Clever spreads, such as Duncan’s “white cat in the snow” perfectly capture the crayons’ conundrum, and photographic representations of both the letters and coloring pages offer another layer of texture, lending to the tale’s overall believability.
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: June 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-25537-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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