Review by New York Times Review
WITH EACH NEW SEASON of children's books, subjects seem to cluster. Not long ago, a slew of sloth books appeared. Then two blobfish books, in the same month. This year it's picture books that wear their hearts on their sleeves, displaying value statements, as titles, on their jackets. Recently, "Be Kind" and "All Are Welcome" have shared space on a Times best-seller list topped by the similarly didactic but less utopian "We Don't Eat Our Classmates!" Now four new picture books, whose illustrators are among America's best, arrive with almost matching titles: "The Dreamer," "Dreamers," "Imagine!" and "Imagine." Until recently, people who imagined were dreamers, more or less; now "dreamer" has taken on an additional, weighty meaning. Two of these four books contend with the dreams that immigrants harbor, while two just celebrate the liberating imagination that informs both art and science. You might guess which are which, and you'd be wrong. CASE IN POINT: Il Sung Na's THE DREAMER (Chronicle, 52 pp., $16.99; ages 3 to 5) has no political overtones. It's about a green pig whose dream to fly with the birds leads him (after running with feathers clutched in his fists doesn't work) to invent the Wright brothers' biplane. Repeated failures turn around only when he accepts help from quirky animal friends (a great pink elephant!), and they all consult with actual birds - lesson being that success requires cooperation and listening. Not stopping at plane flight, the pig sets sights on the heavens, and in short order lands on the moon in a spaceship, then shares his new knowledge communally, so animals in flying vessels soon crisscross the sky. Somehow, Pig still yearns for bird-dom, and the book ends where it began. I must confess to not quite understanding the story's ending. And the rhythm of its language is unsatisfying. There's a popular rule in picture book writing to delete all words describing anything the pictures show, but a pileup of sentences that leave so much unsaid doesn't sound like storytelling. Still, I love the illustrations. Out of Il Sung Na's brush flow the most wonderful shapes and colors; his designs land on the page as elegant abstractions (beautifully using the white of the page as shape and color), yet what registers most are vivid, personable characters. I hope Pig and friends return in a more fully resolved story, but I'm happy to have spent 52 pages with them, and I think children will be, too. WHILE THE CHARACTERS in Yuyi Morales's DREAMERS (Neal Porter/Holiday House, 40 pp., $16.99; ages 4 to 8) aren't the young immigrant Dreamers currently threatened by the United States government, the commonality is clear. All immigrants arrive with a dream, Morales says in her notes. The narrator of "Dreamers" is the authorillustrator, speaking to her baby son: "I dreamed of you, then you appeared. Together we became Amor - Love - Amor. Resplendent life, you and I." You can see that the writing tends to the florid. The art, too, is big, billowy, digitally collaging together copious poetic details of personal significance (and of varying scrutability). Gorgeous display is one of Morales's strengths, fully deployed in glowing scenes before mother and child cross a bridge into a forbidding world, all brown and gray. Despite their cold welcome, the pair eventually find a place of refuge, then delight and the promise of life and growth. This utopia is the library, filled with illustrated books. "Dreamers" is a paean to libraries, to reading and writing and creativity, a value statement I endorse wholeheartedly. "Dreamers" aims for the glorious and the poetic; it's big, passionate, crammed with detail. My own preference is for passion in smaller doses, with more breathing spaces. One element of detail that is not inscrutable is the inclusion of dozens of actual children's books strewn about this utopian library, tiny tributes to work that changed Morales's life, and a lot of fun to pick out and recognize. RAÚL COLÓN'S IMAGINE! (Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster, 48 pp., $17.99; ages 4 to 8) could be seen as surrealist autobiography. It's a follow-up to his award-winning "Draw!," a wordless book that played games with depiction, featuring an artistic boy who draws his way into African wildlife adventures. In "Imagine!," a similar child skateboards from his Brooklyn home to the Museum of Modern Art. There, a character from Matisse's "Jazz" suite steps down from his frame, sets the boy dancing, and the two dancers lure a group of musicians (plus a dog) out of their Picasso, and another musician (plus a lion) down from her Rousseau. Art lover and art form a dancing band that merrily tours New York City (the Statue of Liberty's crown, a ride on the Cyclone, hot dogs from a street vendor) before heading back, jammed hilariously into a taxi. Colón's vibrant tableaus hint at other great art by Seurat or Manet. The story continues: Boy skateboards home, filled with inspiration, and chalks a mural onto the wall of an abandoned building. Late that night his art companions - from the museum, from his mural - float outside the window of this dreamer. This fine book provides not only exposure to art, and an example of art, but also an example of a boy - a boy of color, a boy in America - with a passion for fine art. These are all things that our culture could well stand to see more of. JUAN FELIPE HERRERA and Lauren Castillo's IMAGINE (Candlewick, 32 pp., $16.99; ages 4 to 8) is the perfect complement to "Imagine!": It's about a boy with a passion for words. It's an immigrant story, too, and a poem, pastoral at first: "If I picked chamomile flowers / as a child / in the windy fields and whispered / to their fuzzy faces, / imagine. . . . " On each new spread, a phrase beginning "If I," and ending with the prompt "imagine," carries us through the young boy's move from his rural village to a city, to a school where he will learn English, write stories, sing in front of class. He will fall in love with words, write songs and gradually mature in the pictures - and finally, he will read his poetry atop the steps of the Library of Congress, as the poet laureate of the United States. A question is posed: If he did that. . . . We turn the page, anticipating the word "imagine" that ended each earlier stanza, and are rewarded with "imagine what you could do." It's true: The book's author, Juan Felipe Herrera, is a former United States poet laureate. This "If I could do it, you can do anything" exhortation is standard inspirational speech material, so why did I not find it remotely didactic? Lauren Castillo's perfect illustrations - warm, deftly composed, with the sensual allure of woodcuts (she seems to have combined foam monoprints with ink and digital work) - are so captivating they might on their own overcome a ho-hum story. But this poem is a masterly picture book text: Its precisely chosen words create a world you have to listen to, to think about. When at the end you learn that you were being told this boy's story as a spur to your own potentially amazing one, the surprise and the gratification outweigh any sense of a lesson being taught. PAUL O. ZELINSKY, a Caldecott Medal winner, has written and illustrated many books for children. He is the illustrator of "All of a Kind Family Hanukkah," written by Emily Jenkins, which will be published this fall.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
The Poet Laureate of the U.S. from 2015 to 2017, Herrera offers up a brief autobiography in free verse, encouraging readers to consider their future. As the son of migrant workers growing up in California, sensitive young Juan enjoys sleeping outside and admiring the flowers near his country home. Though his family moves many times, he finds that words are a constant that make him happy and give him freedom to create. Overcoming hardships, such as having to walk to the nearest town for water and entering school not knowing the English language, make him a stronger person. By putting words together, he finds he's able to write stories, poems, and songs. Castillo used foam monoprint and pen to beautifully illustrate the author's early life. Backgrounds have a soft, almost unfocused look, while specific objects are clearly outlined in a dark hue. Herrera's talents of speaking, singing, playing music, and writing poetry are inspiring. This quiet tale may motivate readers to reflect on their abilities and allow their imaginations to envision the opportunities that await them.--Maryann Owen Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Each stanza of this verse memoir by former U.S. Poet Laureate Herrera ends with the word "imagine." Is it a sigh, or is it an imperative? "If I let tadpoles/ swim across my hands/ in the wavy creek,/ imagine," he writes about his early childhood. Entering his English-speaking school was a challenge-he spoke Spanish-yet language fascinated him, and he began to write stories, poems, and songs: "If I grabbed a handful/ of words/ I had never heard and/ sprinkled them over a paragraph... imagine." As an adult, he stood on the steps of the Library of Congress as poet laureate. Now he fills out the sentence that begins with the word imagine: "Imagine what you could do." Spacious, light-filled spreads by Castillo (Nana in the City) conjure up landscapes of red earth, bright sun, and long views. Herrera writes of the joy of creation and discovery, and says little about the hardships he must have undergone. The story of a brown-skinned boy who "practiced/ spelling words/ in English by/ saying them in Spanish/ like-pehn-seel for/ pencil" reaching recognition as the nation's most lauded poet offers a heartening narrative of hope: "imagine." Ages 5-9. Illustrator's agent: Paul Rodeen, Rodeen Literary. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 4-A young child of migrant farmers spends his time picking flowers, playing with tadpoles, sleeping under the stars, helping with chores, and learning to say goodbye each time his family leaves their home for someplace new. The boy grows, eventually walking to a new school alone, knowing he cannot yet read or write English. He practices spelling in English by using what he knows in Spanish, and collects pens as well as words to write magnificent stories. He sings in front of his classmates, and learns guitar so that he can turn his poetry into songs. (If I picked up/my honey-colored guitar/and called out my poem/every day/until it turned into a song,/imagine.") Written by the master wordsmith himself, this work details Herrera's life as a young boy spending time outside and then as an adolescent learning to craft poetry, before ultimately receiving the honor of U.S. Poet Laureate as an adult. His words are accompanied by pen-and-foam monoprint illustrations that sweep across the page to create a soft, dreamy feeling, further encouraging readers to heed the author's recurring refrain: imagine. Readers will finish the story envisioning all the possibilities that may await them. VERDICT A beautifully illustrated poem that will be cherished by children. A first purchase.-Maggie Mason Smith, Clemson University, SC © 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
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Herrera finds a tenderly expressive artistic partner in Caldecott Honor winner Castillo (Nana in the City, rev. 11/14), who illustrates this sensitive and moving picture book inspired by the poets own life. Herrera invites children to share in his childhood experiences through evocative language and imagery: If I picked chamomile flowers / as a child / in the windy fields and whispered / to their fuzzy faces, / imagine. Castillo shows, in her ink and foam monoprints, the young child crouching with his nose to the flower, eyes closed, surrounded by many more flowers. On each double-page spread, readers are pulled in to the childs experience, as he and his family leave his California farmworkers village for a town and then a big city. As he grows, entering school not knowing English, but grabbing a handful of new words and beginning to write, Castillo shows the poems the boy is writing flowing across the page. Herreras lyrical text asks readers to imagine what it was like to be him but, more importantly, and in a completely open and liberating way, to consider their own possibilitiesto imagine what you could do. At storys end, Castillo shows Herrera standing before a sea of people, all watching him speak as Poet Laureate of the United States of America; then, with the page-turn, we see a landscape scene with a big starry sky over water and mountains, inviting children out into the wide world. susan dove lempke (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
Former Poet Laureate Herrera encourages his young readers to imagine all they might be in his new picture book.Herrera's free verse tells his own story, starting as a young boy who loves the plants and animals he finds outdoors in the California fields and is then thrust into the barren, concrete city. In the city he begins to learn to read and write, learning English and discovering a love for words and the way ink flows "like tiny rivers" across the page as he applies pen to paper. Words soon become sentences, poems, lyrics, and a means of escape. This love of the word ultimately leads him to make writing his vocation and to become the first Chicano Poet Laureate of the United States, an honor Herrera received in 2015. Through this story of hardship to success, expressed in a series of conditional statements that all begin "If I," Herrera implores his readers to "imagine what you could do." Castillo's ink and foam monoprint illustrations are a tender accompaniment to Herrera's verse, the black lines of her illustrations flowing across the page in rhythm with the author's poetry. Together this makes for a charming read-aloud for groups or a child snuggled in a lap.A lyrical coming-of-age story in picture-book form that begs to be shared. (Picture book/memoir. 4-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
