A contemplative, poignant rendering of everyday journeys.
A mass-transit vehicle conveys the life of a metropolis from dawn to dusk.
In this picture book, a subway train shares intimate stories while ferrying passengers around Seoul. Its mechanical, rhythmic, motion—“ba-dum, ba-dum”—echoes the city’s heartbeat, pulsating through a collective memory and quotidian history. Together, readers encounter myriad travelers and glimpse individual lives: Mr. Wanju rushing to and from work, yearning to be with his daughter; Granny returning from the sea with the morning’s catch to “cook a feast for [her] girls”; Lee Do-young, age 29, jobless, “not sure what’s next.” Watercolor washes establish figures and shapes at once suggestive and formalistic; artful lines and gradations detail features, facial expressions, and hairstyles, defining unique human beings amid a sea of anonymity. Jung Yu-seon—former “cry-baby, sleepy-head, scaredy-cat”—whirls between household chores and child care, maintaining a frenetic pace from which she takes respite in the subway’s “embrace.” As a witness, this anthropomorphized vehicle poetically parallels the cobbler Mr. Jae-sung, because they both can “tell so much about a person just from looking at their shoes” and “guess the paths they might have walked.” Reflective observations, along with the circuitous route, create dynamic tension against the train’s linear trajectory and the passage of time, prompting readers to pause—and perhaps ponder the fleeting encounters with “strangers you might never meet again.”
A contemplative, poignant rendering of everyday journeys. (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-950354-65-8
Page Count: 52
Publisher: Scribble
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
A fair choice, but it may need some support to really blast off.
This rocket hopes to take its readers on a birthday blast—but there may or may not be enough fuel.
Once a year, a one-seat rocket shoots out from Earth. Why? To reveal a special congratulatory banner for a once-a-year event. The second-person narration puts readers in the pilot’s seat and, through a (mostly) ballad-stanza rhyme scheme (abcb), sends them on a journey toward the sun, past meteors, and into the Kuiper belt. The final pages include additional information on how birthdays are measured against the Earth’s rotations around the sun. Collingridge aims for the stars with this title, and he mostly succeeds. The rhyme scheme flows smoothly, which will make listeners happy, but the illustrations (possibly a combination of paint with digital enhancements) may leave the viewers feeling a little cold. The pilot is seen only with a 1960s-style fishbowl helmet that completely obscures the face, gender, and race by reflecting the interior of the rocket ship. This may allow readers/listeners to picture themselves in the role, but it also may divest them of any emotional connection to the story. The last pages—the backside of a triple-gatefold spread—label the planets and include Pluto. While Pluto is correctly labeled as a dwarf planet, it’s an unusual choice to include it but not the other dwarfs: Ceres, Eris, etc. The illustration also neglects to include the asteroid belt or any of the solar system’s moons.
A fair choice, but it may need some support to really blast off. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-338-18949-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: David Fickling/Phoenix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Quietly contemplative and thoroughly lovely.
A child finds adventure and a change of perspective on a dreary day.
Clouds cover everything in a palette of unending gray, creating a sense of ennui and gloom. A child stands alone, head down, feeling as gray as the day, and decides to ride through town on an old bike. Pops of color throughout the grayscale illustrations go unnoticed—there are yellow leaves scattered about, and the parking lot is filled with bright yellow buses, but this child, who has skin the grayish white of the page, sees only the empty playground, creaky swings, a sad merry-go-round, and lonely seesaws. But look—there’s a narrow winding path just beyond the fence, something to explore. There are things to be noticed, leaves to be crunched, and discoveries to be made. Imagination takes over, along with senses of wonderment and calm, as the child watches a large blue bird fly over the area. The ride home is quite different, joyful and filled with color previously ignored, reaffirming the change in the rider’s outlook. The descriptive, spare text filled with imagery and onomatopoeia is well aligned with well-rendered art highlighting all the colors that brighten the not-so-gray day and allowing readers to see what the protagonist struggles to understand, that “anything can happen…on a gray day.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Quietly contemplative and thoroughly lovely. (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781797210896
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
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