Former Poet Laureate Herrera encourages his young readers to imagine all they might be in his new picture book.
Herrera’s free verse tells his own story, starting as a young boy who loves the plants and animals he finds outdoors in the California fields and is then thrust into the barren, concrete city. In the city he begins to learn to read and write, learning English and discovering a love for words and the way ink flows “like tiny rivers” across the page as he applies pen to paper. Words soon become sentences, poems, lyrics, and a means of escape. This love of the word ultimately leads him to make writing his vocation and to become the first Chicano Poet Laureate of the United States, an honor Herrera received in 2015. Through this story of hardship to success, expressed in a series of conditional statements that all begin “If I,” Herrera implores his readers to “imagine what you could do.” Castillo’s ink and foam monoprint illustrations are a tender accompaniment to Herrera’s verse, the black lines of her illustrations flowing across the page in rhythm with the author’s poetry. Together this makes for a charming read-aloud for groups or a child snuggled in a lap.
A lyrical coming-of-age story in picture-book form that begs to be shared. (Picture book/memoir. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9052-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
Categories: CHILDREN'S POETRY | CHILDREN'S BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A linguistic and visual feast awaits in Alexander and Sweet’s debut collaboration.
If the mechanics of deciphering words on a page is a well-covered topic, the orchestration of finding magic between pages is an art emphasized but unexplained…until now. First things are first: “find a tree—a black tupelo or dawn redwood will do—and plant yourself.” Once settled, take the book in hand and “dig your thumb at the bottom of each juicy section and pop the words out…[then] // Squeeze every morsel of each plump line until the last drop of magic / drips from the infinite sky.” Reading, captured here in both content and form, is hailed as the unassailably individual, creative act it is. The prosody and rhythm and multimodal sensuousness of Alexander’s poetic text is made playfully material in Sweet’s mixed-media collage-and-watercolor illustrations. Not only does the book explain how to read, but it also demonstrates the elegant and emotive chaos awaiting readers in an intricate partnership of text and image. Despite the engaging physicality of gatefolds and almost three-dimensional spreads, readers with lower contrast sensitivity or readers less experienced at differentiating shapes and letters may initially find some of the more complex collage spreads difficult to parse. Children depicted are typically kraft-paper brown.
New readers will be eager to follow such unconventional instructions, and experienced readers will recognize every single step . (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-230781-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S POETRY
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A tiger can’t believe it’s being upstaged in this picture-book riff on William Blake’s famous poem.
A group of zoologically diverse animals huddle around a fire, listening to a porcupine read from a chilling poem: “Bunnies, bunnies, burning bright, / in the forests of the night—.” An incredulous tiger interrupts, saying that the poem is actually about it. But a squirrel matter-of-factly states that “Here, it’s ‘bunnies, bunnies.’ ” The tiger still doesn’t understand why the animals would be so afraid of bunnies but not afraid of tigers and tries to explain why it, an apex predator, is far more threatening. The smaller animals remain unimpressed, calmly telling the tiger that “In this forest, we fear the bunny” and that it should “Hide now, before it’s too late.” An amusing and well-done premise slightly disappoints at the climax, with the tiger streaking away in terror before a horde of headlamp-wearing bunnies, but eager readers never learn what, exactly, the bunnies would do if they caught up. But at the end, a group of tigers joins the other animals in their awestruck reading of the adapted Blake poem, included in full at the end. Cute, fuzzy illustrations contrast nicely with the dark tone and forest background.
A quirky, fun story that will appeal to young audiences looking for a little bit of scare, with a premise so good it overcomes a weak conclusion. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4814-7800-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S POETRY
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