A delightful and satisfying snowy-day story, with the subtle advantage of a main character with a Spanish name.
A lovable lamb ventures out into the snow, playing with friends and getting lost when night falls.
Little Pablo is excited to see his first snowfall, which he perceives as “pieces of clouds” falling from the sky. He leaves his parents and their cozy barn to step out into the deep snow, where he enjoys sledding, a snowball fight, and building a snowman with his animal friends. When Pablo falls asleep next to the snowman, another snowstorm rolls in, leaving the lamb lost and afraid in the dark. In a satisfying conclusion, Pablo’s parents find their son and escort him back to the safety of home. Charming watercolor illustrations make excellent use of white space as the snowy backgrounds, capturing the light-filled brilliance of a snowy afternoon and contrasting effectively with the slightly spooky setting of the nighttime scene with dark trees and swirling snow. One arresting double-page spread shows a petrified Pablo all alone in the snowy forest, but another spread showing the snowman is hard to understand visually as the snowman is split vertically in half by the gutter. Pablo’s adventurous day encapsulates the traditional elements of a hero’s journey: leaving home, experiencing new pleasures, facing danger, and finding the way back home again, wiser for the lessons learned in the wider world.
A delightful and satisfying snowy-day story, with the subtle advantage of a main character with a Spanish name. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62779-412-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A sweet, tender and charming experience to read aloud or together.
A clueless duckling tries to make a new friend.
He is confused by this peculiar-looking duck, who has a long tail, doesn’t waddle and likes to be alone. No matter how explicitly the creature denies he is a duck and announces that he is a cat, the duckling refuses to acknowledge the facts. When this creature expresses complete lack of interest in playing puddle stomp, the little ducking goes off and plays on his own. But the cat is not without remorse for rejecting an offered friendship. Of course it all ends happily, with the two new friends enjoying each other’s company. Bramsen employs brief sentences and the simplest of rhymes to tell this slight tale. The two heroes are meticulously drawn with endearing, expressive faces and body language, and their feathers and fur appear textured and touchable. Even the detailed tree bark and grass seem three-dimensional. There are single- and double-page spreads, panels surrounded by white space and circular and oval frames, all in a variety of eye-pleasing juxtapositions. While the initial appeal is solidly visual, young readers will get the gentle message that friendship is not something to take for granted but is to be embraced with open arms—or paws and webbed feet.
A sweet, tender and charming experience to read aloud or together. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-86990-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
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