A rowdy, raucous return for Niño and a dazzling debut for his most worthy rivals.
Pint-sized luchador Niño captured readers’ imaginations in the Pura Belpré Award–winning title Niño Wrestles the World (2014). Now he is back, but this time his baby sisters, Las Hermanitas, have come to steal the show.
Childlike drawings on the opening endpapers explain that luchadores are divided into two categories: técnicos (good guys) and rudos (bad guys). Las Hermanitas are definitely rudas. Niño is playing with some familiar characters, El Extraterrestre and La Llorona, when Las Hermanitas burst onto the scene and the rumble begins. They take on their opponents one by one and use whatever rotten means necessary to crush the competition, starting right off with a move called the Poopy Bomb Blowout. The action and humor continue until only Niño can bring an end to his little sisters’ destruction. This follow-up uses the same playful, graphic illustration style and vibrant color palette seen in the original. Several Spanish words and phrases appear in the callouts and speech bubbles, many of which are defined in the closing endpaper illustrations. The English text is peppered with alliteration, onomatopoeia, and a few words that will stretch young readers’ growing vocabulary (such as “phenomenal” and “preposterous”). The overall effect is a narrative that begs to be read aloud.
A rowdy, raucous return for Niño and a dazzling debut for his most worthy rivals. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62672-240-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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