Entertaining if limited arts appreciation.
In this almost-wordless picture book, five small children walk obediently through an art museum with their caregiver/teacher—and the art itself demands interaction.
A very young child who presents Asian climbs the steps of an imposing, neoclassical building to join a racially diverse but similarly aged group lined up before a red sign that reads “No touching the art.” Their teacher and museum guard—both women of color in Lozano’s cartoony art—exchange understanding glances over the children’s heads. Once inside, the titular mayhem begins. After a character from a cartoony replica of a famous Renoir painting leans out to give the child figurative raspberries, an ersatz Van Gogh portrait hands over his literal hat. In room after room, additional works of Western European art unload hats, flowers, fruits, and musical instruments upon patrons whose expressions change from vexed to pleased; even the guard becomes a participant. The art is appropriately colorful and exuberant, with varied layouts. Unfortunately, the red sign becomes a didactic, unnecessary punchline. Lozano carefully places plaques next to each work replicated but fills them with scribble instead of useful information; the pieces are identified in tiny type on the copyright page. The strong effort to show diversity in museum patrons and workers is undercut by the highly Eurocentric representation of art depicted. Anna at the Art Museum, by Hazel Hutchins and Gail Herbert and illustrated by Lil Crump (2018), is more sophisticated and more engaging.
Entertaining if limited arts appreciation. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09354-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be...
In his third beginning reader about Otto the robot, Milgrim (See Otto, 2002, etc.) introduces another new friend for Otto, a little mouse named Pip.
The simple plot involves a large balloon that Otto kindly shares with Pip after the mouse has a rather funny pointing attack. (Pip seems to be in that I-point-and-I-want-it phase common with one-year-olds.) The big purple balloon is large enough to carry Pip up and away over the clouds, until Pip runs into Zee the bee. (“Oops, there goes Pip.”) Otto flies a plane up to rescue Pip (“Hurry, Otto, Hurry”), but they crash (and splash) in front of some hippos with another big balloon, and the story ends as it begins, with a droll “See Pip point.” Milgrim again succeeds in the difficult challenge of creating a real, funny story with just a few simple words. His illustrations utilize lots of motion and basic geometric shapes with heavy black outlines, all against pastel backgrounds with text set in an extra-large typeface.
Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be welcome additions to the limited selection of funny stories for children just beginning to read. (Easy reader. 5-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-85116-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
A serene, feel-good outing with a cozy, old-fashioned feel.
In this Japanese import, the first in a long-running series to appear in English, two girls ride bikes through a forest—with stops for clover-blossom tea and jam sandwiches.
It’s such a benign wood that Chirri and Chirra—depicted as a prim pair of identical twins with straight bob cuts—think nothing of sharing both a lunch spot and a nap beneath a tree with a bear and a rabbit. Moreover, at convenient spots along the way there is a forest cafe with a fox waiter plus “tables and chairs of all different size” to accommodate the diverse forest clientele, a bakery offering “bread in all different shapes and jam in all different colors,” and, just as the sun goes down, a forest hotel with similarly diverse keys and doors. That night a forest concert draws the girls and the hotel’s animal guests to their balconies to join in: “La-la-la, La-la-la. What a wonderful night in the forest!” Despite heavy doses of cute, the episode is saved from utter sappiness by the inclusive spirit of the forest stops and the delightfully unforced way that the girls offer greetings to a pair of honeybees at a tiny adjacent table in the cafe, show no anxiety at the spider dangling above their napping place, and generally accept their harmonious sylvan world as a safe and friendly place. Doi creates her illustrations with colored pencil, pastel, and crayon, crafting them to look like mid-20th-century lithographs.
A serene, feel-good outing with a cozy, old-fashioned feel. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59270-199-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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