Review_CHILDREN’S
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The power of a great haircut is on full display
in Barnes and James’s vibrant picture book
(reviewed on this page).
Picture Books
One Little Goat
Ursula Dubosarsky, illus. by Andrew Joyner.
Little Hare (IPG/Trafalgar Sq., dist.), $17.99
(40p) ISBN 978-1-74297-692-1
The duo behind The Terrible Plop returns
with a spiky riff on the cumulative song
“Had Gadya” (a Passover Seder staple) that
softens its sharp edges—somewhat.
Joyner’s loopy, brightly colored cartoons
set the action in a contemporary-looking
village, where a girl introduces the “little
baby goat/ My daddy bought.” As in the
original song (which dates to the 16th century), the goat is promptly eaten—in this
case by a tabby cat wearing a mauve suit.
Joyner shows the girl looking at the cat
with alarm (the rope leash she’s holding
now ends in its mouth). The cat is then bit
by a dog that gets whacked by a “great big
stick” come to life, which is burned by a
ball of flame that runs around on stick
legs. The destruction continues (an ox in a
tracksuit is chased by a cleaver-wielding
mouse butcher) until everyone is scared off
by a foreboding stranger. In the original,
this character is the angel of death. Here,
it’s neighborhood kids in disguise—joined
by the somehow resurrected goat—who
defuse the preceding comic violence with a
good dose of mischief. Up to age 4. (Oct.)
; Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut
Derrick Barnes, illus. by Gordon C. James.
Bolden/Millner (PGW, dist.), $17.95 (32p)
ISBN 978-1-57284-224-3
How good can a haircut make a person
feel? “Magnificent. Flawless. Like royalty.”
In a powerfully moving tribute to barber-
shop culture, Barnes (We Could Be Brothers)
addresses readers directly—and it’s safe to
say his audience is primarily boys of
color—using hyperbole to boost their con-
fidence and help them recognize their own
value. “You came in as a lump of clay,” he
writes, “a blank canvas, a slab of marble./
But when my man is done with you,/
they’ll want to post you up in a museum.”
Created with thick, forceful daubs of
paint, James’s luminous portraits reinforce
the idea that, when a person looks this
good, not even the sky is the limit. Of a
man admiring the curving designs newly
shaved into his head, the narrator remarks,
“Maybe there’s a river named after him on
Mars. He looks that important.” Pride,
confidence, and joy radiate from the pages,
both in the black and brown faces of men,
women, boys, and girls featured in
Barnes’s majestic paintings, and in writing
that celebrates human worth with every
syllable. Barbers included: “Tip that man!
Tip that man!” Ages 3–8. (Oct.)
Three Balls of Wool
Henriqueta Cristina, trans. from the
Portuguese by Lyn Miller-Lachmann, illus. by
Yara Kono. Enchanted Lion (Consortium, dist.),
$16.95 (32p) ISBN 978-1-59270-220-6
Produced in association with Amnesty
International, this allegorical story follows
a family that flees a “warm, sunny country”
beset by vaguely described political troubles for a “clean and tidy” nation where “all
the children go to school.” When buying
sweaters for her children, the narrator’s
mother realizes that only three colors are
available: gray, green, and orange. “They
look like an army marching in their uniforms,” she whispers to her husband. She
then unravels the sweaters and combines
the yarn to knit new ones in bold checks,
zigzags, and stripes—surprising the town’s
residents and starting a fashion trend.
Except for a handful of pink-skinned chil-
dren, Kono sticks to a limited palette of
gray, green, orange, and black in her illus-
trations—blocky, screenprintlike images
dotted with Xs, Os, and other characters
that evoke knitting symbols. It’s a quiet
and sensitively observed look at a family’s
efforts to stay safe in uncertain times. An
afterword reveals the story’s inspiration in
a family that fled Portugal’s dictatorship
in the 1960s and settled in Prague; the
United Nations’ Universal Declaration of
Human Rights appears in full in the final
pages. Ages 3–9. (Oct.)
The Bad Mood and the Stick
Lemony Snicket, illus. by Matthew Forsythe.
Little, Brown, $17.99 (48p) ISBN 978-0-316-
39278-5
Curly wears overalls and two poofy pigtails. Her expression is stormy. A multicolored bad mood hovers above her like a
cloud. Then she pokes her brother with a
stick and cheers right up. Curly’s mother
has the bad mood now; then it moves to a
man named Lou, and from there “all over
the world. You yourself had it several
times.” All kinds of feelings prove contagious in Snicket’s story; the lowly stick
spreads cheer in Curly’s town the way the
bad mood spreads gloom. The story traces
how chance knits together the lives of
Curly, her family, Lou, Lou’s dry cleaner,
and the ice cream man. Snicket doesn’t
paper over the way the discomfort of
others can turn a bad mood around; at the
same time, he celebrates generosity, community, and the workings of fate (“You
never know what is going to happen”).
Forsythe’s sherbet-hued images combine
big cartoon gestures with rich color.
Snicket’s quirky narrative voice and observations of events both great and lowly
make this a fine readaloud—and a sure
cure for a bad mood. Ages 4–8. Author’s
agent: Charlotte Sheedy, Charlotte Sheedy
Literary. Illustrator’s agent: Judith Hansen,
Hansen Literary. (Oct.)
A Night Out with Mama
Quvenzhané Wallis, illus. by Vanessa Brantley-Newton. Simon & Schuster, $17.99 (40p)
ISBN 978-1-4814-5880-1
What’s it like to walk the red carpet
when you’re a kid? Wallis knows: at age
nine, her feature-film debut in Beasts of the
Southern Wild earned her a Best Actress
nomination, making her the youngest
nominee ever. In Wallis’s first children’s
book (publishing simultaneously with the
launch of a chapter book series), the reason
for the lightly fictionalized narrator’s
Children’s/ YA