Review by Booklist Review
Ages 3-8. How better to celebrate ethnic diversity than to look to children, the hope of the future? This glorious picture book, with its spare, lyrical text, does just that. Illustrated with oil paintings of youngsters of all ages, the carefully worded text rolls in serpentine swirls across pages on which children "who come in all the colors of the earth" laugh, smile, ponder, join hands, and rejoice in the common pleasure of being young. Upbeat and exuberant, this is a selection to share. (Reviewed September 1, 1994)0688111319Deborah Abbott
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"Lyrical" text and "extraordinary, light-filled" paintings celebrate the earth, children and the diversity of the world's ethnic heritages, said PW. Ages 4-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-4-A poetic picture book and an exemplary work of art. The simple text describes children's skin tones and hair in terms of natural phenomena (``...the roaring browns of bears''; ``...hair that curls like sleeping cats in snoozy cat colors'') and then describes love for these children with rich colors and flavors (``...love comes in cinnamon, walnut, and wheat...''). Hamanaka's oil paintings are all double-page spreads filled with the colors of earth, sky, and water, and the texture of the artist's canvas shines through. The text is arranged in undulant waves across each painting. This might be paired with Arnold Adoff's Black Is Brown Is Tan (HarperCollins, 1973), for younger readers, or his All the Colors of the Race (Lothrop, 1982), for older students, or read alone in celebration of diversity.-Barbara Chatton, College of Education, University of Wyoming, Laramie (c) Copyright 2010. 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
Told in quiet, flowing verse, a paean to children in all their diversity is lovingly conceived and illustrated. However, the book suffers from a somewhat didactic tone, and although many of the double-page spreads, executed in oil on canvas, are stunning and contain real emotional power, others are quite saccharine in their portrayal of idealized multiethnic groups of children. From HORN BOOK 1994, (c) Copyright 2010. 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
This heavily earnest celebration of multi-ethnicity combines full-bleed paintings of smiling children, viewed through a golden haze dancing, playing, planting seedlings, and the like, with a hyperbolic, disconnected text--``Dark as leopard spots, light as sand,/Children buzz with laughter that kisses our land...''-- printed in wavy lines. Literal-minded readers may have trouble with the author's premise, that ``Children come in all the colors of the earth and sky and sea'' (green? blue?), and most of the children here, though of diverse and mixed racial ancestry, wear shorts and T-shirts and seem to be about the same age. Hamanaka has chosen a worthy theme, but she develops it without the humor or imagination that animates her Screen of Frogs (1993). (Picture book. 5-7)
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