This Norwegian import may not be best for very squeamish readers, but it is an inclusive and inventive gateway to begin...
When Samira learns that everyone has a skeleton, she can’t stop picturing friends and family as walking jumbles of bones.
Normally Samira loves school. But when her teacher begins talking about skeletons—even worse, says that Samira has one inside of her—Samira gets spooked. As Samira slowly begins to comprehend her teacher’s lesson, Kuhn deftly lightens Samira’s dark brown skin until readers are able to see her bones—along with the bones of everyone else around her. Suddenly, Samira is surrounded by skeletons. Even her best friend, Frida, is one! Luckily, Samira’s mom has a cunning solution. If skeletons scare Samira so much, why not just take hers out? (Her operating tools of choice are scissors, a cheese grater, a rolling pin, and a plunger.) With imagined worms, jellyfish, and other invertebrates slithering around, neither Samira nor her skeleton will stand for that! Samira quickly finds Frida, and they run around the playground, in full acceptance of their not-so-spooky insides. That is, until they learn about…muscles. Kuhn’s light-lined, childlike style is a neat match for the ever-so-slightly ghoulish proceedings, her bigheaded children easily morphing into big-skulled skeletons.
This Norwegian import may not be best for very squeamish readers, but it is an inclusive and inventive gateway to begin lessons on the body. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8028-5463-6
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent.
Wouldn’t the same housecat look very different to a dog and a mouse, a bee and a flea, a fox, a goldfish, or a skunk?
The differences are certainly vast in Wenzel’s often melodramatic scenes. Benign and strokable beneath the hand of a light-skinned child (visible only from the waist down), the brindled cat is transformed to an ugly, skinny slinker in a suspicious dog’s view. In a fox’s eyes it looks like delectably chubby prey but looms, a terrifying monster, over a cowering mouse. It seems a field of colored dots to a bee; jagged vibrations to an earthworm; a hairy thicket to a flea. “Yes,” runs the terse commentary’s refrain, “they all saw the cat.” Words in italics and in capital letters in nearly every line give said commentary a deliberate cadence and pacing: “The cat walked through the world, / with its whiskers, ears, and paws… // and the fish saw A CAT.” Along with inviting more reflective viewers to ruminate about perception and subjectivity, the cat’s perambulations offer elemental visual delights in the art’s extreme and sudden shifts in color, texture, and mood from one page or page turn to the next.
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4521-5013-0
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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