An uplifting and affecting work for readers of any age.
Lew offers a picture book of affirmations for children.
This book’s narration asserts that in order for one to have the heart of a warrior, one must first learn what such a warrior is: someone who faces their fears with a big heart, believes in themselves, feels happy, sad, excited, or scared, and knows that “Feeling these things makes them stronger.” Throughout, readers are encouraged to light the “tiny spark that makes them shine like a star” by saying the affirmations that appear in bold type on the following pages, such as “I stay true to myself,” “I rise when I fall,” and “I am a warrior, and I hold onto the love within me.” Arslan’s vivid watercolor-style illustrations are beautiful and lively, and they add greatly to the reading experience. There are no named characters, but one girl is highlighted; she experiences various emotions and is shown trying again after unsuccessfully approaching a task. (Other children are shown with various skin tones and body types with some using mobility aids.) The declarations are impressively encouraging, empowering, and heartening, and they effectively connect to a foreword for adults, in which Lew expresses a hope: “may the affirmations on each page serve as the words you needed to hear as a child growing up.”
An uplifting and affecting work for readers of any age.Pub Date: May 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781957242248
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Global Bookshelves International, LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many.
Young Raina is 9 when she throws up for the first time that she remembers, due to a stomach bug. Even a year later, when she is in fifth grade, she fears getting sick.
Raina begins having regular stomachaches that keep her home from school. She worries about sharing food with her friends and eating certain kinds of foods, afraid of getting sick or food poisoning. Raina’s mother enrolls her in therapy. At first Raina isn’t sure about seeing a therapist, but over time she develops healthy coping mechanisms to deal with her stress and anxiety. Her therapist helps her learn to ground herself and relax, and in turn she teaches her classmates for a school project. Amping up the green, wavy lines to evoke Raina’s nausea, Telgemeier brilliantly produces extremely accurate visual representations of stress and anxiety. Thought bubbles surround Raina in some panels, crowding her with anxious “what if”s, while in others her negative self-talk appears to be literally crushing her. Even as she copes with anxiety disorder and what is eventually diagnosed as mild irritable bowel syndrome, she experiences the typical stresses of school life, going from cheer to panic in the blink of an eye. Raina is white, and her classmates are diverse; one best friend is Korean American.
With young readers diagnosed with anxiety in ever increasing numbers, this book offers a necessary mirror to many. (Graphic memoir. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-545-85251-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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