A book-loving, brown-skinned, proactive young girl advocates for stories with characters that look like her.
Her appetite for books is so insatiable that she likes stories of all kinds, including those “full of thrones, quests, friendship, and dreams” and those “with brave heroines and heroes saving the day.” Although she views herself as a heroine, she has a “nagging suspicion” that she doesn't meet the “criteria for a heroine's condition” because not a single character in the books she loves looks like her. Searching for characters with brown skin who “do magic, fight villains, and find lost cities of gold,” she finds only stories of “struggle, hardship, and pain” and asks what it means “for a girl like me…to never see a face like mine.” Undaunted, she opts to create her own stories of “cocoa-colored mer-people, honey-hued dragon slayers, and superheroes with locs.” She invites readers to join her in making her “melanated words come to life” and in telling stories as “diverse as our skin.” The energetic, upbeat text employing the occasional rhyme transmits an urgency designed to prompt readers to action. Colorful and imaginative illustrations show the spunky protagonist engulfed by towers of books and transported to storybook worlds peopled by brown-skinned characters.
A rousing call to action for more racially diverse children’s literature. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4998-1225-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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A color-themed vision of what school should be like.
In what amounts to a rehash of The World Needs More Purple People (2020), Bell and Hart address adult as well as young readers to explain what “curious and kind you” can do to make school, or for that matter the universe, a better place. Again culminating in the vague but familiar “JUST. BE. YOU!” the program remains much the same—including asking questions both “universe-sized” (“Could you make a burrito larger than a garbage truck?”) and “smaller, people-sized” (i.e., personal), working hard to learn and make things, offering praise and encouragement, speaking up and out, laughing together, and listening to others. In the illustrations, light-skinned, blond-haired narrator Penny poses amid a busy, open-mouthed, diverse cast that includes a child wearing a hijab and one who uses a wheelchair. Wiseman opts to show fewer grown-ups here, but the children are the same as in the earlier book, and a scene showing two figures blowing chocolate milk out of their noses essentially recycles a visual joke from the previous outing. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
The message is worthy, but this phoned-in follow-up doesn’t add anything significant. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-43490-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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BOOK REVIEW
Gerald the elephant learns a truth familiar to every preschooler—heck, every human: “Waiting is not easy!”
When Piggie cartwheels up to Gerald announcing that she has a surprise for him, Gerald is less than pleased to learn that the “surprise is a surprise.” Gerald pumps Piggie for information (it’s big, it’s pretty, and they can share it), but Piggie holds fast on this basic principle: Gerald will have to wait. Gerald lets out an almighty “GROAN!” Variations on this basic exchange occur throughout the day; Gerald pleads, Piggie insists they must wait; Gerald groans. As the day turns to twilight (signaled by the backgrounds that darken from mauve to gray to charcoal), Gerald gets grumpy. “WE HAVE WASTED THE WHOLE DAY!…And for WHAT!?” Piggie then gestures up to the Milky Way, which an awed Gerald acknowledges “was worth the wait.” Willems relies even more than usual on the slightest of changes in posture, layout and typography, as two waiting figures can’t help but be pretty static. At one point, Piggie assumes the lotus position, infuriating Gerald. Most amusingly, Gerald’s elephantine groans assume weighty physicality in spread-filling speech bubbles that knock Piggie to the ground. And the spectacular, photo-collaged images of the Milky Way that dwarf the two friends makes it clear that it was indeed worth the wait.
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends . (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-9957-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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