Young Helen Keller cannot hear, see or speak, but she knows the scent of vanilla cake coming out of the oven, the feel of her mother’s fancy silk dress and that the dog is tense because the horses are outside. A stranger arrives, one who traces shapes into her hand, each day, all the time. Helen finally connects these shapes with meaning, and spells “w-a-t-e-r” back to her teacher. She learns quickly, even telling the flowers apart by texture and scent, until she can spell, and define, the love that connects her to her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Ransome’s sunlit colors and warm textures indoors and out make an excellent visual counterpoint to the rhythmic text, though too often they do not capture the young Keller’s glowing beauty. More problematic from a nonfiction standpoint is the textual interpolation of Helen’s thoughts as she puzzles out the world, but the device works well to evoke her shuttered-in world to sighted and hearing children. A nice introduction to a fascinating life for the very youngest of readers. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-057074-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Collins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2008
Rick the bear and his pal, Jack the rabbit, star in their second emergent reader, featuring just one or two short and simple sentences per page. Rick is sick in bed and Jack tries to help by bringing hot tea and an ice pack, by sitting on Rick’s tummy, and finally by curling up next to Rick for a nap. McPhail’s appealing animal characters are full of expression as always, with the pair of devoted friends featured in circular watercolor-and-ink illustrations alternating with pages of text. The actual story is just 16 pages long, with the remaining pages devoted to a follow-up activity (creating a friendship award), a page of discussion questions, author biography, and two pages of information about the Green Light Readers series, including a list of titles. This format seems intended for classroom use and includes guided reading and Reading Recovery levels for teachers. (Easy reader. 5-7)
Pub Date: April 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-15-205091-4
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Green Light/Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2004
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40.
From two Nobel Peace Prize winners, an invitation to look past sadness and loneliness to the joy that surrounds us.
Bobbing in the wake of 2016’s heavyweight Book of Joy (2016), this brief but buoyant address to young readers offers an earnest insight: “If you just focus on the thing that is making / you sad, then the sadness is all you see. / But if you look around, you will / see that joy is everywhere.” López expands the simply delivered proposal in fresh and lyrical ways—beginning with paired scenes of the authors as solitary children growing up in very different circumstances on (as they put it) “opposite sides of the world,” then meeting as young friends bonded by streams of rainbow bunting and going on to share their exuberantly hued joy with a group of dancers diverse in terms of age, race, culture, and locale while urging readers to do the same. Though on the whole this comes off as a bit bland (the banter and hilarity that characterized the authors’ recorded interchanges are absent here) and their advice just to look away from the sad things may seem facile in view of what too many children are inescapably faced with, still, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the world more qualified to deliver such a message than these two. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Hundreds of pages of unbridled uplift boiled down to 40. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-48423-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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