A touching tribute to migrant workers who blossom in any soil.
Just as their beloved peach tree cycles through seasons of change, so, too, do the lives of a father and child.
Tao Hua and Baba live in the mountains of China. Life isn’t easy, and they always have work to do, but they have each other…and a lovely peach tree that Baba tends to all year. Using poetic but matter-of-fact language, Tang describes this blessing in their lives (“Our tree’s cloud of flowers turned magenta like the sky at dinnertime”). Baba brings in extra income selling the peaches during the summer. Each day he saves the best one for Tao Hua, and every night, the child buries the pit in the field behind the house. One year, the peach tree fails to blossom; it’s reached the end of its life cycle. Baba works a series of jobs to earn money. Finally, he lands a stable job in the city, a dreary place without “peach sun” that nevertheless offers many opportunities. Years later, when Tao Hua has blossomed into an adult and Baba has grown old, they return to their mountain home. Rather than finding a single peach tree, they see “a rainbow of pink and red [reaching] high into the sky.” Kim’s delicate, expressive art portrays both the beauty of the natural world and this loving family’s indomitable spirit.
A touching tribute to migrant workers who blossom in any soil. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9780593565070
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House Studio
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted...
Reinvention is the name of the game for two blobs of clay.
A blue-eyed gray blob and a brown-eyed brown blob sit side by side, unsure as to what’s going to happen next. The gray anticipates an adventure, while the brown appears apprehensive. A pair of hands descends, and soon, amid a flurry of squishing and prodding and poking and sculpting, a handsome gray wolf and a stately brown owl emerge. The hands disappear, leaving the friends to their own devices. The owl is pleased, but the wolf convinces it that the best is yet to come. An ear pulled here and an extra eye placed there, and before you can shake a carving stick, a spurt of frenetic self-exploration—expressed as a tangled black scribble—reveals a succession of smug hybrid beasts. After all, the opportunity to become a “pig-e-phant” doesn’t come around every day. But the sound of approaching footsteps panics the pair of Picassos. How are they going to “fix [them]selves” on time? Soon a hippopotamus and peacock are staring bug-eyed at a returning pair of astonished hands. The creative naiveté of the “clay mates” is perfectly captured by Petty’s feisty, spot-on dialogue: “This was your idea…and it was a BAD one.” Eldridge’s endearing sculpted images are photographed against the stark white background of an artist’s work table to great effect.
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted fun of their own . (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-30311-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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