![]() ![]() No, not just a good game, but a phenomenal experience. This warm family story is a splendid showcase for the combined talents of Medina, a Pura Belpré award winner, and Dominguez, an honoree.After 11 years, it overjoys me to say that Sonic The Hedgehog has finally had another good 3D title. A Spanish-language edition, Mango, Abuela, y yo, gracefully translated by Teresa Mlawer, publishes simultaneously. They will also cheer for the warm and loving relationship between Abuela and Mia, which is evident in both text and illustrations even as the characters struggle to understand each other. Readers from multigenerational immigrant families will recognize the all-too-familiar language barrier. ![]() And as Abuela and Mia teach Mango, and each other, to speak both Spanish and English, their “mouths with things to say.” The accompanying illustrations are charmingly executed in ink, gouache, and marker, “with a sprinkling of digital magic.” They depict a cheery urban neighborhood and a comfortable, small apartment. ![]() She and her mother buy a parrot they name Mango. A red feather Abuela has brought with her to remind her of a wild parrot that roosted in her mango trees back home gives Mia an idea. Mia sets out to teach her Abuela English. And Abuela’s English is too poquito to tell Mia all the stories a granddaughter wants to hear. The measured, evocative text describes how Mia’s español is not good enough to tell Abuela the things a grandmother should know. But how will they communicate if Mia speaks little Spanish and Abuela, little English? Could it be that a parrot named Mango is the solution? Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.Ībuela is coming to stay with Mia and her parents. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.) Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. (This book was reviewed digitally.)Ī home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature. Young readers will appreciate the superhero jokes but may not connect with the overall theme of the book, and that’s OK. The tongue-in-cheek tone and energetic illustrations rendered in colored pencil, watercolor, and Photoshop propel the reader through an entire childhood in a nostalgic blur, and every parent will relate to the feeling of loving, holding on, and then letting go of this time that passes so quickly. Before you know it, the parents are celebrating their child in cap and gown, then saying goodbye as their confident young adult drives off to college. Santat’s comical depiction of this exhausted and shellshocked Asian family is sure to elicit knowing smiles from parents as the child learns to walk and becomes the Blur, racing “headfirst toward danger” and leaving “no corner unexplored.” Spreads depicting the trouble the child gets into, as well as a myriad of idyllic scenes of childhood, show time zipping along as the Blur morphs into a teen. Simultaneously a spoof on the superhero genre and a tribute to parenthood, Lê's text reads like a voice-over narrator describing the origin story of a new hero: the Blur! Beginning as an infant, the baby immediately displays hilarious superpowers, such as “the supersonic voice” (the little one’s loud wails) and “fantastically elastic limbs” (middle-of-the-night bed sharing). The Blur is a whirlwind force from the moment the infant arrives home until the day the child drives off to college. ![]()
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