A powerful, multilayered depiction of an increasingly common situation.
In Pulitzer Prize–winning Nguyen’s latest, a Vietnamese American girl and her mother evacuate their home.
Má wakes Simone from a dream, depicted in vibrant color, into a nighttime scene, portrayed in grayscale; the only color is a menacing orange outside their window, cresting the ridge beyond their street: “Fire!” Simone chooses important items to take, her crayons and drawings standing out in rainbow hues, and soon they’re in their car. Simone sees firefighters in bright yellow as well as prisoners in orange from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, all working to extinguish the blaze. Má explains that when she was Simone’s age, her home in Vietnam was flooded. The two arrive at a shelter in a school gym, where Simone sees an opportunity to use her crayons to help the other scared children. Panels in varying shapes and sizes outlined by negative space give the narration a comic book–like structure, and dialogue primarily appears in speech bubbles. Stunning illustrations, rendered in graphite, colored pencil, and watercolor, are soft, focusing less on the characters’ fear and more on community and cooperation in the face of disaster. Afterward, Simone returns home having made new friends and armed with the knowledge that everyone is capable of being a helper. In a closing note, Nguyen and Phan discuss the 2020 California wildfires and their impact on San Jose’s Vietnamese American population.
A powerful, multilayered depiction of an increasingly common situation. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781662651199
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Minerva
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
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
From curds to riches, from meltdown to uplift—this multicourse romp delivers.
A winning wheel of cheddar with braggadocio to match narrates a tale of comeuppance and redemption.
From humble beginnings among kitchen curds living “quiet lives of pasteurization,” the Big Cheese longs to be the best and builds success and renown based on proven skills and dependable results: “I stuck to the things I was good at.” When newcomer Wedge moves to the village of Curds-on-Whey, the Cheese’s star status wobbles and falls. Turns out that quiet, modest Wedge is also multitalented. At the annual Cheese-cathlon, Wedge bests six-time winner Cheese in every event, from the footrace and chess to hat making and bread buttering. A disappointed Cheese throws a full-blown tantrum before arriving at a moment of truth: Self-calming, conscious breathing permits deep relief that losing—even badly—does not result in disaster. A debrief with Wedge “that wasn’t all about me” leads to further realizations: Losing builds empathy for others; obsession with winning obscures “the joy of participating.” The chastened cheddar learns to reserve bragging for lifting up friends, because anyone can be the Big Cheese. More didactic and less pun-rich than previous entries in the Food Group series, this outing nevertheless couples a cheerful refrain with pithy life lessons that hit home. Oswald’s detailed, comical illustrations continue to provide laughs, including a spot with Cheese onstage doing a “CHED” talk.
From curds to riches, from meltdown to uplift—this multicourse romp delivers. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063329508
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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