Review by New York Times Review
Three new picture books help young readers explore their emotions. HAPPY Written and illustrated by Mies van Hout. 52 pp. Lemniscaat USA. $17.95. (Picture book; ages 2 to 8) HOW DO YOU FEEL? Written and illustrated by Anthony Browne. 32 pp. Candlewick Press. $14.99. (Picture book; ages 2 to 6) FISH ON A WALK Written and illustrated by Eva Muggenthaler. 32 pp. Enchanted Lion Books. $16.95. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8) AMERICANS love to talk about feelings. We do it almost compulsively and generally go about with the assumption that expressing emotion is a good idea. We are always articulating anger, jealousy and anxiety while people from more decorous cultures know when to keep their inner lives and dirty laundry to themselves. America's iconic picture books are expressions of the difficult feelings kids often experience. Think of "Where the Wild Things Are" or "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day." We produce loads of picture books for the very youngest readers aiming to help them assign labels to moods and to learn self-expression, almost enough to constitute an entire subgenre. Funny, then, that three new picture books about feelings are all European imports. Mies van Hout's "Happy" is a tour de force of. underwater awesomeness and emotion, showcasing what an artist can do with a few pastels, black paper and something fundamental to express. I want to hug it and buy a copy for every shorty on my list. This translation from the Dutch is nothing more than a list of emotions, handlettered on textured backgrounds and illustrated on opposite pages by hugely adorable and expressive fish. It opens tentatively: "curious/nervous/brave/ shy/surprised. ..." The creatures accurately represent the emotions, but they're also unexpected - fresh colors, strange shapes. Most of them look like deep-sea creatures, floating and emoting about the secret lives they live in the black depths of the enormous ocean. "Happy" climaxes - insofar as such a book can - with "shocked," and the accompanying picture presents a fusion blowfish-piranha puffed up and showing all its spiky teeth in horror at some unseen vision. On the last page, a gloriously plump whalelike creature surges upward, ending the book with a surprising sense of closure: "delighted." No reader could feel otherwise. "How Do You Feel?," by Anthony Browne, presents a very similar concept, but its pages are devoid of passion. Browne is a former British Children's Laureate and has won all kinds of fancy awards. His work is often explicitly about the power of imagination, and his pictures are so dreamy as to feel surreal, but one of his trademarks is also to ground fantasy meaningfully in touchingly mundane details. For example, Browne's 2001 book "My Dad" shows how a schlumpy, bathrobe-wearing father becomes wondrous and powerful when we see him through the eyes of his child. In "The Shape Game" a reluctant family visit an art museum where they gradually let their imaginations run free. Both make ordinary family life soar into hilarity and grandeur. "How Do You Feel?" is a much simpler, and less magical, book than these earlier works. On each page is a portrait of a toddler ape experiencing an emotion, always wearing the same clothes. Browne has used this repetitive format to great effect in other books - "Willy the Dreamer," for example - but that book contains a surprise or joke on nearly every page. The portraits of Willy convey fantasies and incongruities. Each picture operates on multiple levels. Here, the text is depicted simply and Uterally. "Often I feel REALLY SILLY!" shows the little ape wiggling and making a funny face. "Sometimes I feel sad" shows a moping face on a rainy day. But the emotions aren't always seen in context. There's no reason the little ape feels happy or angry - but a banana does make him hungry, while a pop-up book creates surprise. Browne's books have made me catch my breath in awe, laugh and ponder the universe. He has a stunning ear for cadences of speech and for juxtaposing working-class characters with highbrow culture - then fusing them, amazingly. Sadly, "How Do You Feel?" has none of Browne's usual ingenuity and weirdness. Eva Muggenthaler 's "Fish on a Walk" is not about fish at all, but about adjectives. A German import, it's a series of droll paintings spread across two pages. Each spread has a pair of words at the bottom - contrasting, emotional words. "Scared-Brave" shows a small bunny hiding behind his huge bass fiddle as an audience of excitable fruits and vegetables awaits his performance. Is he scared or is he brave? Is anyone else in the picture scared or brave? Or both at once? Why yes, many people potentially are, depending on how one interprets the picture. Upon inspection, another small rabbit can be seen waiting in the back, anxiously clutching a clarinet. The bass player's parents hover in the wings. A peach in the crowd seems fearful. Perhaps she's attending her first concert, or maybe she's a friend of the bass player. A ladybug drinks coffee at the edge of the stage, her emotions inscrutable. "Fish on a Walk" invites conversation. It can be read in fresh ways on different days; children and parents can argue happily and endlessly about the meanings of the pictures and the words attached to them. Other spreads include "Tricky-Truthful," "Rude-Friendly" and "Usual-Unusual." This last pair of words accompanies the title illustration, in which a pair of fish stroll leisurely across a bridge. A troop of bugs lug matching shopping bags across a second, smaller bridge; a crayfish in a captain's hat smokes a pipe. At first, one is hard-pressed to find anything "usual" in Muggenthaler's picture; on further reflection, perhaps this is quite a usual day for these particular creatures. Many of them do seem to be just going about their business. Our children's libraries are already glutted with books about emotions that only tell us the names of mild, everyday feelings. But even simple books about feelings can exhibit complexity, ingenuity and passion, inspiring my very favorite emotion: curiosity. Emily Jenkins is the author of many books for children, including "Toys Go Out" Her next book, "Invisible Inkling: Dangerous Pumpkins," is due in July.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 17, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review
The young chimp from Things I Like (1989) and I Like Books (1988) returns in a new concept book, this time about feelings. After asking, How do you feel? the chimp describes his range of emotions: happy, sad, curious, guilty, and so on. While the text itself communicates each emotion using large, bold letters for surprised, a smaller font for lonely, letters that seem to leap up and down for funny, and so forth it's Browne's brightly colored watercolor-and-gouache illustrations of the expressive chimp that truly convey the animal's feelings best. For example, there's no doubt that the stomping chimp, with its teeth bared, eyes wide, and all those red marks emitting from his head, is angry, or that the yawning chimp drawn only in grayscale is bored. A concluding double-page spread with thumbnail illustrations recaps the emotions, allowing preschoolers, particularly those less verbal, to point out how they are feeling right now.--Leeper, Angela Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This deceptively simple book introduces an overalls-clad chimp who evokes a spectrum of emotions as he answers the titular question. Though the minimal text is forthright ("Sometimes I feel very happy... and sometimes I feel sad"), Browne's (Me and You) nuanced watercolor and gouache pictures use body language and other cues to amplify each emotion. Crayon-box colors (temporarily) turn gray for an image of the "bored" chimp, who has abandoned his toys in a corner. Pictured against a blank white backdrop, the "lonely" animal is seen at a fraction of his normal size, hands clasped in front of him. Even the chimp's sneakers appear to smile as he jumps for joy when happy, while his sad persona looks out glumly from a window as rain falls (indoors) and a flower droops. The chimp models 14 emotions and other feelings (like hungry and full) in total, all of which reappear in miniature on a final spread that asks readers directly how they feel, cementing the book's usefulness as a tool to both introduce emotions and encourage discussions of readers' feelings. Ages 3-up. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-K-"How do you feel?" asks an adorable, overall-clad monkey. The cute little primate discusses a range of emotions that children might experience in a variety of situations. Sometimes he is bored or lonely or sad. He also feels happy, curious, or surprised. He can be worried or silly, hungry or full. He is the focal point of each watercolor and gouache painting. His facial expressions, along with the palette and design of the illustrations, reflect the appropriate emotion. For example, the text, "and sometimes I feel lonely" appears on a spread of white space broken up only by a small image of the frowning monkey standing alone. He feels guilty as he stands beside a drawing on the wall, a pencil concealed behind his back. At the end of the book, the monkey asks, "How do YOU feel?" Miniatures of each preceding illustration reiterate all the feelings introduced. Although this book provides a comprehensive introduction to positive and negative emotions, the presentation is somewhat flat. As the sole character, the monkey does not interact with friends or family. He deals with his feelings on his own. For a more engaging selection, try Janan Cain's The Way I Feel (Parenting, 2000) or Aliki's Feelings (Greenwillow, 1984).-Linda L. Walkins, Mount Saint Joseph Academy, Brighton, MA (c) Copyright 2012. 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
Clad in red-cuffed overalls and a grass-green sweater, one of Browne's trademark chimps responds to the title question. Though the premise is familiar, the text brief, and the illustrations spare, the engaging chimp expresses a range of feelings preschoolers will relate to. The final line of text--"How do YOU feel?"--pointedly invites readers to share their own emotions. (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
Emotions are so critical to childhood that there's always room for a bright new book about them. With blue overalls, a green sweater, yellow sneakers and a trademark Browne primate face, this toddler-shaped chimp really catches the eye. He (or perhaps she, skipping the usual girl-markers like long hair) looks up at an unseen speaker, who asks, "How do you feel?" The young chimp demonstrates various feelings: "Sometimes I feel very happy / and sometimes I feel sad"; sometimes confident, guilty, angry, silly, shy or worried. Browne uses scale, hue, facial expression and minimalist backgrounds to make each watercolor-and-gouache picture fetching in its own way. "[B]ored" shows a black-and-white spread, toys banished to a corner, mouth open in a blas yawn. "[L]onely" shows young chimp small and far away, isolated in a vast white spread, casting a fragile shadow. On the royal-blue "sad" page, the young chimp gazes miserably out a window while raindrops fall indoors, symbolically. The last three feelings--hungry, full and sleepy--shift from emotional to physical but are certainly relevant. A final spread shows thumbnail reprints for kids to point to and name as they answer the query, "How do YOU feel?" For a younger audience than Browne's brilliantly dark, subtle pieces, this is a hearty, cheerful offering that appropriately refrains from undermining the non-cheerful emotions. (Picture book. 1-4)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
