Review by New York Times Review
THE FEMALE PERSUASION, by Meg Wolitzer. (Riverhead, $28.) Of all the political threads that permeate Wolitzer's 12th novel, the most interesting is the challenge of intergenerational feminism. But Wolitzer is an infinitely capable creator of human identities as real as the type on this page; people are her politics. AETHERIAL WORLDS: Stories, by Tatyana Tolstaya. Translated by Anya Migdal. (Knopf, $25.95.) Tolstaya's remarkable short stories are all about people haunted by their flashing glimpses of shadow worlds - moments when the dull plastic coating of reality peels back to reveal something vastly more precious underneath. RUSSIAN ROULETTE: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. (Twelve, $30.) Two veterans of Washington political journalism provide a thorough and riveting account of the 2016 election that casts an unfavorable light on both the Democratic and Republican campaigns. This is a book without heroes. GUN LOVE, by Jennifer Clement. (Hogarth, $25.) Clement's novel, her second about the gun trade, unfolds at a Florida trailer park where firearms and people intimately coexist. The imagery is dreamlike, as if to suggest the self-delusion of the novel's real-life counterparts. EDUCATED, by Tara Westover. (Random House, $28.) This harrowing memoir recounts the author's upbringing in a survivalist Idaho family cursed by ideological mania and outlandish physical trauma, as well as her ultimately successful quest to obtain the education denied her as a child. TANGERINE, by Christine Mangan. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $26.99.) In this sinister, sun-drenched thriller, set in the 1950s and rife with echoes of Patricia Highsmith, two college friends - involved in something dark and traumatic during their time at Bennington - get caught up in an even more lurid story when they meet, a year or two later, in Tangiers. NO TURNING BACK: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria, by Rania Abouzeid. (Norton, $26.95.) This narrative of the Syrian war from 2011 through 2016 offers page after page of extraordinary reporting and exquisite prose, rendering its individual subjects with tremendous intimacy. HELLO LIGHTHOUSE, by Sophie Blackall. (Little, Brown, $18.99; ages 4 to 8.) Blackall's illustrated journey through the history of one lighthouse captures themes of steadfastness and change, distance and attachment, and the beauty and tumult of nature. THEY SAY BLUE, by Jillian Tamaki. (Abrams, $17.99; ages 4 to 8.) This gorgeous debut picture book from a cartoonist and graphic novelist gets inside the mind of a thoughtful girl who contemplates colors, seasons and time as she questions her world. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* There's something ineffable about Caldecott Honor Book illustrator Tamaki's debut picture book, but that might be precisely the point. In swirly washes of aqueous color, laid down in thick, textural brushstrokes, and evocative figures sketched in fine lines of black ink, a young girl contemplates the world around her, with special attention to color, mood, and mutability. She notices the color of the sky and the ocean, and how they're different from water in her hand. She notes how she knows some colors egg yolks, blood without having to see them. Tamaki sends her young protagonist on a happy flight of fancy while she observes a field of yellow grass, but that imaginative journey is quashed by the gray, rainy sky matching her grumpy mood. There's not a structured narrative or lesson per se, but Tamaki nevertheless latches onto something particularly childlike in her depiction of the constant motion of seasons, feelings, what words mean, and the world at large. The free-associative nature of the child narrator's interaction with her surroundings seems utterly familiar, and approaching it with observational, sensory language lands it firmly in territory children can relate to. This poetic, off-kilter little book has enigmatic power, and observant children will likely be enchanted.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A girl weighs what she's been told about the world against what she observes and knows, leading to more questions and contemplations. Working in lush, watery acrylics, Tamaki (This One Summer) initially paints the girl on a windy beach. She admits that the sky and sea look blue at the moment: "But when I hold the water in my hands, it's as clear as glass." Just because something is visible doesn't mean it's true, the girl recognizes, and there's truth in the invisible, too ("I don't need to crack an egg to know it holds an orange yolk inside"). Color and nature-red blood, golden fields, a purple flower-serve as a through line in a story that takes a surreal leap when the girl throws off her winter layers, stretches, and grows into a tree, continuing her observations as the seasons pass. In a quiet conclusion, the girl (human once again) and her mother watch crows soar against a dawn sky that's far from blue. Thinking, imagining, noticing-these, Tamaki suggests, are the tools we have to understand our world. Ages 5-7. Agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 1-Tamaki's picture book debut explores color and the seasons in a lyrical, philosophical way that is rooted in a child's sensibilities. A young girl contemplates things most assume as hard truths. "They say blue is the color of the sky..Which is true today! They say the sea is blue, too." But then she points out that it looks blue, but when she holds it in her hands "it's clear as glass." Then she wonders is a blue whale blue? She hasn't seen one. In a nonlinear, vignette fashion, seasons change as do feelings of frustration to wonder, capturing a child's imagination, mindfulness, and inquiry. Each unexpected turn from thought to thought will allow opportunities for rich discussion when using the book with children. Large swathes of acrylic paint on top of inked illustrations bring energy, color, and light to each sensitively rendered moment. Tamaki uses a motif of the young girl with her arms raised throughout, radiant with joy whether she is playing in the ocean, shedding winter clothes, or imagining that she is the tree she watches outside her bedroom window. The book ends with an intimate moment of her mother waking her in the morning, and as her mother braids her hair, they watch crows and wonder together what they are thinking. VERDICT Attuned to a child's psychology and patterns of -critical thinking, this visually stunning work is a must-purchase for libraries.-Danielle Jones, Multnomah County Library, OR © Copyright 2018. 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
A girl considers the wondrousness of the world around her, prompted by the colors she encounters throughout her day. While at the beach, she gazes across the water (They say the sea is blueBut when I hold the water in my hands, its clear as glass); crouching under an umbrella, she looks closely at a spring crocus (Oh! Could purple mean something new?); her mother braids her hair (Black is the color of my hair. My mother parts it every morning, like opening a window). Tamaki (Caldecott Honoree for This One Summer, rev. 7/14) skillfully employs elements of sequence throughout the book, reinforcing themes of progression and growth. The girl is frequently shown multiple times across a particular scene, as if caught in frames by a camera: swimming in the ocean, riding a rowboat across a fantastical sea of golden grass. A few spreads follow the passing seasons, as the girl casts off her cold-?weather garb, looking skyward to a warming sun (and the palette changes from cool to warm). With the turn of a page, she stretches to the sky and, step-by-step across the double-page spread, becomes a tree. The book follows a sort of sequence of its own, beginning with a bright morning beside a blue ocean and concluding with a radiant orange-red sunset. The text moves effortlessly between prosaic description and poetic contemplation, making of color something both familiar and extraordinary, comforting and inexplicable. Tamakis rich acrylic paintings combine scratchy ink linework with watery brushstrokes, establishing a visual tension that echoes this paradoxical sense of things being just at hand yet frequently astonishing. thom barthelmess (c) Copyright 2018. 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
Readers experience the colors and sensations of the world through the varying moods and observations of one little girl.A golden-skinned child with straight black hair frolics in the water, noticing that the sea looks blue from a distance. "But when I hold the water in my hands, it's as clear as glass." She ponders hidden colors, from the orange of the yolk nestled inside an egg to the red blood that is always pumping through her body, whether she is calm and quiet or running across a playground filled with ethnically diverse children in school uniforms. Her mood soars as she imagines riding a boat over waving yellow grass but comes thudding down to earth as she disembarks from her school bus beside said grassy field, stepping into the cold grayness of a rainy day. The exuberant joys of spring and summer, the return of autumn, and the natural slowing down of winter's return mark the passage of time. The poetic language pairs well with the acrylic-and-Photoshop paintings. Most of the artwork conveys movement and feeling rather than being meticulously literalsuch as when the girl muses about the color of blue whales and impressionistic dabs of darker blue form the flukes of a whale beneath herwith the startling exception of the detailed, highly realistic spread of crows taking flight.Neither exactly a book about colors nor exactly a book about seasons, this is a reminder to slow down, savor the present, notice small details, and relish childlike wonder. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
