Review by New York Times Review
The land heavyweights of the animal kingdom figure largely in three picture books. TWEAK TWEAK By Eve Bunting. Illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier. 40 pp. Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $14.99. (Picture book; ages up to 3) POMELO BEGINS TO GROW By Ramona Badescu. Illustrated by Benjamin Chaud. Translated by Claudia Bedrick. 48 pp. Enchanted Lion Books. $16.95. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8) GRANDPA GREEN Written and illustrated by Lane Smith. 32 pp. Roaring Brook Press. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 5 to 9) FEW creatures can compete with elephants when it comes to being both magnificent and ungainly, but human children, if we're being honest with ourselves, come close. This sense of distant kinship, plus the fact that trunks are the coolest appendages this side of opposable thumbs, may be why elephants have been a staple of children's literature since the days of Rudyard Kipling and Jean de Brunhoff. True, they're not quite so numerous on the bookshelf as bunnies, mice and ducklings, but they outnumber squids by a long shot, and, what with their tree-stump legs, bulky bodies, sail-like ears and those sinuous trunks, elephants are surely more fun for illustrators to draw than just about anything, aside from explosions. So elephants: bring 'em on! And here they are, in two new picture books that use elephant protagonists to explore the pleasures and anxieties of growing up, and a third, on the far side of the equation, in which an elephant symbolizes age and endurance - thanks, presumably, to the species' reputation for long memory and Botox-defying wrinkles. I loved "Pomelo Begins to Grow." Funny, smart and idiosyncratic, graceful and intuitive in a way that feels as much dreamed as written, Ramona Badescu's tale (translated from the French) is less a story per se than a series of musings, a kind of ad hoc therapy session for those conflicted about getting older, which, in contemporary America, where middle-aged men dress like skate punks and 20-something women covet face-lifts, means pretty much everyone. Badescu's title character is a little garden elephant (distant relative to a lawn flamingo, I learned from an online garden-supply catalog), who notices one morning that "his favorite dandelion" seems unusually small. So too some strawberries, a pebble, a potato and an ant Light bulb: Pomelo realizes it's he himself who's getting bigger. At first, this is cause for elation. "Yippee! Yahoo! Yay! All at once, Pomelo feels the super-hyper-extra force of the cosmos spreading through him." I wouldn't want to be the parent who has to explain this metaphysical conceit to a 4-year-old, though Benjamin Chaud's wonderful illustration of Pomelo vaulting between planets puts the mood across nicely. But back on earth, after banging his head on a low-hanging tomato, Pomelo - whose giant circular eyes with their giant circular pupils owe something to Mo Willems's pigeon - begins to have second thoughts. "Is he already too big for his world? . . . Pomelo begins to forget what it was like to be really little." Children, who in my experience are far more nostalgia-prone than adults - I've seen kids pine for half an hour ago - will surely relate to this sense of impending loss. A cheeky writer, Badescu risks parental dismay by tossing in further anxieties that might never have occurred to kids, like Pomelo's fear that he "won't grow equally all over." The final page finds our hero still trying to make sense of what's happening to his body, but confident and ready for adventure. Kids will be reassured as well as stimulated and amused; adults will find their own resonances. I wish I had been as charmed by Eve Bunting's "Tweak Tweak," which treads a more familiar path through similar territory. Here, Mama Elephant takes Little Elephant for a walk. Little Elephant spots a frog leaping across a pond and wants to know if she can jump like that too. "No," says Mama Elephant, "because you are not a frog. You are a little elephant. But you can stomp your foot and make a big sound." A monkey climbing a tree, a crocodile swimming in a river and an airborne butterfly prompt similar questions and similar "no, but" self-esteem bolstering: yes, everyone's special in his or her own special way, everyone should love himself and everyone will find a place in the world. The good news is that children, not having already read 100 books with a similarly worthy moral (not to mention the entire run of O: The Oprah Magazine), won't gag. In that vein, Sergio Ruzzier's illustrations are pretty and perfectly nice. I'LL be honest: It's a stretch to include "Grandpa Green," by Lane Smith (probably best known as the illustrator of "The Stinky Cheese Man"), in this elephant-themed review, but the book is such an unassuming little masterpiece it deserves the shoehorning. A "plot" summary won't do it justice, since the book's power lies in its rich, allusive artistry, but here goes: a boy narrates the story of his great-grandfather's life - from birth through adolescence, war, marriage, parenthood and into old age - while walking through a topiary garden whose figures illustrate, either literally or symbolically, scenes from the great-grandfather's life. Near the end, the boy notes, "Now he's pretty old and he sometimes forgets things" - that's where a topiary elephant comes in - "but the important stuff the garden remembers for him." That thought leads into a beautiful foldout of the entire garden, a full life in shrubbery; left unsaid is that the boy himself is another kind of memory-garden. Unlike "Tweak Tweak," this volume, I'm guessing, will find more passionate readers among parents than children - I'm not sure how nostalgic children are about other people's lives - though some will respond to the craft and artfully distilled sentiment. Those who don't will at least enjoy getting lost in the pictures, and may not even mind the relative paucity of trunks and tusks. Bruce Handy, a deputy editor at Vanity Fair, is currently writing a book about reading children's books as an adult.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 21, 2011]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The young elephant Pomelo is growing up, and this French pair, in their English-language debut, chronicle his doubts and questions, transferring onto his eraser-pink body and round eyes the anxieties that ordinary children have but rarely express. "[Pomelo's] a little worried that he won't grow equally all over," Badescu says, as Chaud supplies vignettes of Pomelo with an oversize ear here and an outsize leg there. When Pomelo "wonders what has to happen on the inside for him to grow on the outside," Chaud draws a cutaway view of Pomelo full of complex, mysterious machinery. And to demonstrate that growing up involves "having new experiences," Chaud shows Pomelo eating a hot pepper with fire roaring out of his mouth. Badescu is honest about young childhood's losses ("But seriously, does growing up mean one has to stop clowning around?") and encouraging about older children's joys ("[W]hen your old fears return you are able to laugh at them"). Chaud lavishes as much energy on the verdant backgrounds as on Pomelo; they're like Henri Rousseau's tropics. The whole makes for a quirky, ~ delectable treat. Ages 4-7. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-3-Pomelo is a small pink elephant with a tape-measure-like nose. Curious about the size of his favorite dandelion, he begins to measure things and notices that he himself has grown. "All at once, Pomelo feels the super-hyper-extra force of the cosmos spreading through him." But this feeling comes with all sorts of existential questions: Will he grow equally all over? Will he still have to do the things he doesn't want to do when he gets big? Badescu's endearingly anxious pachyderm mirrors the familiar impatience to grow up, the determination never to act like adults do, and the many other concerns "medium"-sized people face. The author and illustrator demonstrate a brilliant marriage of text and illustration. Chaud's charming paintings of Pomelo in his landscape of dandelions, strawberries, and smiling potatoes-set simply against oversize white pages-breathe life and humor into Badescu's big-picture questions, while playing with scale. Youngsters will laugh at the silly depictions of Pomelo as he grows unevenly, while adults will smile at his joyful exploration of a countryside dotted with asparagus trees, broccoli bushes, and sushi flowers as he learns to love foods that aren't sweet. The imagery may remind some readers of the modern Japanese ultra-cute cartoon style, but the masterful execution-and Badescu's universal subject matter-makes this a picture book that children will return to again and again.-Jayne Damron, Farmington Community Library, MI (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
In this French import, a miniature elephant notices he's getting bigger and begins to ponder a variety of questions about the nature of growth and growing up. The odd little elephant and his fellow garden inhabitants, as shown in the large, spacious illustrations, have great child appeal. Some of Pomelo's more abstract meditations may spark discussion (or go over readers' heads). (c) Copyright 2012. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A tiny pink "garden elephant" has a mighty epiphany in this buoyant, if sometimes oblique, French import.Suddenly realizing that he's taller than an ant, Pomelo "feels the super-hyper-extra force of the cosmos spreading through him. And maybe something even stronger that that!" Whatever it is, it touches off a series of Big Questions, from wondering "what has to happen on the inside for him to grow on the outside" and "does growing up mean one has to stop clowning around?" to whether he's already "forgotten something along the way." Now he looks forward to new experiences, and "want's [sic] to know more" about everything. Endowed with googly eyes and a really long trunk that looks like (and seems about the size of) a wriggly earthworm, Pomelo broadcasts his excitement as he bounces through Chaud's big, very simply drawn cartoon garden scenes. He paints strawberries to look like Easter eggs, takes a mud bath with a corps of smiling bright red-and-yellow potatoes, tries new foods like hot peppers (and, on another page, even sushi) and at last marches off in search of a big adventure after "learning to say 'goodbye' and being able to hear others say it too."Dr. Seuss has already explored most of the places he'll go, but there's always room for another heads-up that adulthood's comingparticularly one that doesn't take itself too seriously.(Picture book. 6-9, graduates, adults)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
