This all-too-common childhood experience is dramatized with an emotional honesty that, refreshingly, skirts sentimentality.
The devoted friendship of two children ends without warning.
The narrator uses the past tense to describe an easygoing, intimate friendship: “I had a friend / a dear friend / with long brown hair.” The two delighted in playing outdoors: picking wildflowers, wading in the brook, and talking and reading together underneath a tree. But one day the narrator calls for her, and “she [isn’t] there.” A trip through the woods reveals that she is with a different friend, and this new duo does many of the same things she once did with the narrator. The narrator grieves—but dreams of a new friendship. Zolotow’s text, originally published in 1968 (with illustrations by Emily Arnold McCully), sensitively captures the trauma of abruptly losing a friend, never diminishing the pain of such a betrayal. Yet the story does not allow the protagonist to wallow in self-pity and instead ends on a moderately hopeful note: The narrator, though still sad, considers a future in which “I won’t care” about having lost this friendship. Chaud’s illustrations feature a verdant, richly colored world as the children run and play in the woods. Playful animal face masks the pair enjoys are used to great effect: When loyalties are abandoned, the narrator disconsolately watches the two new friends wear them, and an enigmatic rabbit mask conceals the identity of the narrator’s imagined new friend. All children are depicted as White.
This all-too-common childhood experience is dramatized with an emotional honesty that, refreshingly, skirts sentimentality. (Picture book. 4-10)Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-990252-01-3
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Milky Way Picture Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Halloween is used merely as a backdrop; better holiday titles for young readers are available.
A ghost learns to appreciate his differences.
The little ghost protagonist of this title is unusual. He’s a quilt, not a lightweight sheet like his parents and friends. He dislikes being different despite his mom’s reassurance that his ancestors also had unconventional appearances. Halloween makes the little ghost happy, though. He decides to watch trick-or-treaters by draping over a porch chair—but lands on a porch rail instead. A mom accompanying her daughter picks him up, wraps him around her chilly daughter, and brings him home with them! The family likes his looks and comforting warmth, and the little ghost immediately feels better about himself. As soon as he’s able to, he flies out through the chimney and muses happily that this adventure happened only due to his being a quilt. This odd but gently told story conveys the importance of self-respect and acceptance of one’s uniqueness. The delivery of this positive message has something of a heavy-handed feel and is rushed besides. It also isn’t entirely logical: The protagonist could have been a different type of covering; a blanket, for instance, might have enjoyed an identical experience. The soft, pleasing illustrations’ palette of tans, grays, white, black, some touches of color, and, occasionally, white text against black backgrounds suggest isolation, such as the ghost feels about himself. Most humans, including the trick-or-treating mom and daughter, have beige skin. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-16.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 66.2% of actual size.)
Halloween is used merely as a backdrop; better holiday titles for young readers are available. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7352-6447-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard.
A grouchy sapling on a Christmas tree farm finds that there are better things than lights and decorations for its branches.
A Grinch among the other trees on the farm is determined never to become a sappy Christmas tree—and never to leave its spot. Its determination makes it so: It grows gnarled and twisted and needle-less. As time passes, the farm is swallowed by the suburbs. The neighborhood kids dare one another to climb the scary, grumpy-looking tree, and soon, they are using its branches for their imaginative play, the tree serving as a pirate ship, a fort, a spaceship, and a dragon. But in winter, the tree stands alone and feels bereft and lonely for the first time ever, and it can’t look away from the decorated tree inside the house next to its lot. When some parents threaten to cut the “horrible” tree down, the tree thinks, “Not now that my limbs are full of happy children,” showing how far it has come. Happily for the tree, the children won’t give up so easily, and though the tree never wished to become a Christmas tree, it’s perfectly content being a “trick or tree.” Martinez’s digital illustrations play up the humorous dichotomy between the happy, aspiring Christmas trees (and their shoppers) and the grumpy tree, and the diverse humans are satisfyingly expressive.
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7335-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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