A lively story with a worthy message about kindness hampered by a too-small font.
A button learns that looks aren’t everything in author/illustrator Olson’s picture book.
Norman, a red button, tells a bedtime story to a group of young buttons. He says that there was once a trio of shiny blue buttons on a lace dress who were unkind. Miss Bonnie was particularly mean, ridiculing the appearance of other buttons. One day, a dog plucks Bonnie off and chews her until she looks “a mess.” When Bonnie returns to the lace dress, the other shiny blue buttons reject her. She cries, “I will never be loved if I’m ugly and maimed.” When a red button teaches Bonnie that “love is earned by your goodness inside,” she apologizes to the buttons she mistreated. They forgive her and accept her offer of friendship, a subtle message about not judging by appearances. Olson tells the story through playful rhyming quatrains (“If you want to make friends, / then I’ll give you a tip. / If your words are not nice, / you should button your lip”) that add to the fun, though a too-small font and dark-mode format may make it less appealing to read aloud. Readers will enjoy Olson’s creative photography: Mixed-media artwork shows buttons with cartoon eyes against unique backdrops, such as a crafts table filled with tools and accessories.
A lively story with a worthy message about kindness hampered by a too-small font.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 21
Publisher: Bellie Button Books
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
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