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A PAINTBRUSH FOR PACO

Not, alas, as strong as Kyle’s earlier Gazpacho for Nacho (illustrated by Carolina Farías, 2014).

Paco is a fidgety daydreamer.

After his teacher reprimands him for not paying attention, the boy compromises by drawing during the lesson. His teacher is amazed by the artwork and takes him to the school’s art studio, where the inexperienced artist miraculously knows how to mix paint. Alarmingly, no one seems concerned when Paco doesn’t return to the classroom. Kyle’s uncomplicated rhyming story employs code-switching to introduce Spanish-language vocabulary. However, the masculine form for teacher, el professor, is only used once—thereafter, it’s used as if it were a proper name without the article “el”—an oversight that will strike many as amateurish. The rhymes and meters are at times forced and awkward. “He colored montañas that stretched to the sky, / with pájaros swooping down low, flying high.” Heinsz’s manga-inspired illustrations are bright but confusing. In one scene Paco is drawing his hometown seemingly somewhere in Spain, and then he’s flying over saguaros in the U.S. Southwest. A bullfighting motif is repeated by both author and illustrator despite its growing unpopularity worldwide and its representation of colonization. The author’s note inadvertently implies that only minority kids “like Paco” are the restless ones. An uneven phonetic glossary is included. Some words are Anglicized while others are not. “Que” is “kay” instead of “keh,” while “Olé” is correctly rendered “oh-LEH.” Paco has black hair and brown skin, and his teacher presents white; his classroom is diverse.

Not, alas, as strong as Kyle’s earlier Gazpacho for Nacho (illustrated by Carolina Farías, 2014). (Picture book. 5-8)

Pub Date: July 3, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-4998-0544-4

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Little Bee Books

Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018

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STINK AND THE MIDNIGHT ZOMBIE WALK

From the Stink series

This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the...

An all-zombie-all-the-time zombiefest, featuring a bunch of grade-school kids, including protagonist Stink and his happy comrades.

This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the streets in the time-honored stiff-armed, stiff-legged fashion. McDonald signals her intent on page one: “Stink and Webster were playing Attack of the Knitting Needle Zombies when Fred Zombie’s eye fell off and rolled across the floor.” The farce is as broad as the Atlantic, with enough spookiness just below the surface to provide the all-important shivers. Accompanied by Reynolds’ drawings—dozens of scene-setting gems with good, creepy living dead—McDonald shapes chapters around zombie motifs: making zombie costumes, eating zombie fare at school, reading zombie books each other to reach the one-million-minutes-of-reading challenge. When the zombie walk happens, it delivers solid zombie awfulness. McDonald’s feel-good tone is deeply encouraging for readers to get up and do this for themselves because it looks like so much darned fun, while the sub-message—that reading grows “strong hearts and minds,” as well as teeth and bones—is enough of a vital interest to the story line to be taken at face value.

Pub Date: March 13, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-7636-5692-8

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Candlewick

Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012

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I WISH YOU MORE

Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.

A collection of parental wishes for a child.

It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.

Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)

Pub Date: April 1, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Chronicle Books

Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015

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