Review by New York Times Review
CAN a picture book actually teach children about kindness? Sure, the goal is worthy. Yet pushing a moral too hard takes the life out of a story and the energy out of an audience. In time for National Anti-Bullying Awareness Month, three new books nonetheless venture onto this tricky terrain. "Each Kindness," by the Newbery Honor-winning author Jacqueline Woodson ("After Tupac and D Foster," "Feathers," "Show Way"), has beautiful watercolors and prose, strong characters and a plot that pricks the conscience. Maya, the new girl in Chloe's class, wants to be friends but she wears old dresses and eats odd food. "On that first day, Maya turned to me and smiled," Chloe tells us. "But I didn't smile back." Chloe's coldness persists as Maya tries to woo her over the weeks that follow, with offerings like jacks, a deck of cards, pick-up sticks and a tattered doll. Each time, Chloe and her friends refuse to play, giving Maya the nickname Never New for her secondhand clothes, and laughing while she jumps rope alone. As I read this description to my 7-year-old niece, my mind flashed to the hurt face of a sixth grader I interviewed for a book I'm writing on bullying. She looked down at her stained shirt as she related the embarrassing question an affluent, fashion-forward girl had asked her: "Where do you buy your clothes?" Woodson gets it right in conveying this small but corrosive cruelty. I expected Woodson to show Chloe getting her act together. Instead, the day after she and her friends start calling Maya Never New, she sees their victim's seat in class is empty. The teacher, meanwhile, asks each student to drop a stone into a bowl of water, think of a kind act they've done and watch the ripples fan out, as if into the world. Chloe can think of no act of kindness to contribute. She keeps trying in the pages that follow, but she doesn't come up with one, and Maya doesn't come back. And so the book ends on a note of missed opportunity and wistful regret. This is pretty tough-minded for a children's story. In "Yoko," the beloved picture book by Rosemary Wells, a Japanese cat whose classmates mock her lunch ("Yuckorama!") gets help when her teacher invites the class to International Food Day. Everyone brings a homey specialty, a raccoon named Timothy tries Yoko's sushi and the next day they push their desks together to open a sushi-and-sandwich restaurant. My sons asked to read "Yoko" over and over again when they were of picture-book age. By contrast, my young niece had to be coaxed into giving "Each Kindness" a second try. Still, precisely because the book is unflinching, I can imagine it doing good in the hands of a wise parent or teacher. It's a junior companion to "The Hundred Dresses," Eleanor Estes's unforgettable 1944 classic about the closet full of clothes a poor girl imagines for herself, to her classmates' consternation. By telling Maya's story from Chloe's vantage point, Woodson makes kids think about how failing to show empathy boomerangs. I was less drawn to "Because Amelia Smiled." David Ezra Stein's crayon art is playful and vivid. But his story amounts to a takeoff on "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," without the mouse and his spirit of sly fun. Amelia is a little girl who smiles on her street in New York. A neighbor sees her and bakes a batch of cookies for her grandson in Mexico - and we are off around the globe, propelled from one happy act of good will to the next. Stein ("Interrupting Chicken") covers lots of diversity bases, with characters that include an African-American teacher, a Mexican kickboxer, a rumba queen in Israel, an ex-clown in Paris and a pizza maker back in New York. The book is an ode to the spread of good karma. The problem is that the traveling acts of kindness don't add up to more than a loosely connected set of pleasant images. There's nothing the least bit objectionable, but there's also little that's memorable. My audience of 3- to 7-year-olds followed along for the most part, but they weren't sure who was who or why they should care, even when the journey circled back to Amelia To succeed, a picture book has to offer something or someone to laugh at, or root for or struggle alongside. "The Forgiveness Garden" the made-up origin story for a real garden planted in Beirut after the Lebanese civil war, goes for struggle. The author, Lauren Thompson ("One Starry Night," "Polar Bear Night"), imagines a long-simmering conflict between two villages, Vayam and Gamte, the kind in which no one remembers the cause. When a Gamte boy, Karune, throws a stone that hits a Vayam girl, Sama, his act of violence stirs calls for vengeance. The book's biblical tone does not shy away from words like revenge and hatred. When Sama is handed a stone to throw at Karune, she looks at the villagers around her and sees "their faces were like hers had been, hardened with anger and fear and hate." Sama takes the turn toward compassion that Chloe did not. She throws her stone to the ground and proposes the construction of a forgiveness garden. Villagers from both sides slowly join her, piling up stones to build a garden wall. They ask Sama questions familiar to any truth and reconciliation committee: "Must we forget all that has happened?" "Must we apologize?" Sama says the garden will help them find the answers, a response that's a little gauzy, but age-appropriate for the book's intended audience. When it comes time to step into the garden, it is Karune who joins Sama. "They began to talk," Thompson writes. "What do you think they said?" That feels like the right open-ended conclusion. I can see "The Forgiveness Garden" resonating especially with children in war-torn or conflict-ridden communities. It opens a door to peacemaking and invites children to imagine for themselves what's on the other side. And isn't that often the first step toward kindness? Emily Bazelon is a senior editor at Slate and author of "Sticks and Stones," a book about bullying coming out in February.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 14, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review
Young Amelia grins as she and her parents splash through a city street. And because Amelia smiled, well, Mrs. Higgins, looking out her window, smiles, too. Happy, she sends cookies to her grandson teaching in Mexico, who shares them with his class. One of his students decides to teach dancing in the park, a video of it goes online, and a ballet club in England sees it and adds some new moves. They tour in Israel and . . . lots more happens after that until Amelia's smile comes full circle. Stein, who won a Caldecott Honor for Interrupting Chicken (2010), uses a quite different style here. Realistic, heavily colored, and intensely detailed, the illustrations invite children to look closely and see the way people across the globe are connected: the smiles, the pets, the music. Certainly, there's a lot to discuss here, and some adults may want kids to make connections with their own actions, but this is also just a lovely way to look at life.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A series of kindly acts comes full circle in this heartwarming, yet never saccharine story from Stein (Interrupting Chicken). "Because Amelia smiled, coming down the street... Mrs. Higgins smiled, too. She thought of her grandson, Lionel, in Mexico and baked some cookies to send to him." Lionel's reaction to his grandmother's gift spurs one of his students to become a kickboxing instructor; her video makes its way to England, inspiring virtuous acts in Israel, Paris, Italy, and back around to Amelia in New York City. Stein's spreads are dense with colored pencil and crayon lines and crammed with visual information. Lionel can be seen in his second-story apartment in an unnamed Mexican city, but Stein draws Lionel's whole neighborhood, with its tiled roofs, food cart, starry night sky, a dog-and that's just one spread. Night and day, light and shadow, groups of old and young people spending time together: it's a satisfying portrait of the feast of life. Even youngest children will grasp the idea that good deeds and positivity beget more of the same. Ages 3-7. Agent: Rebecca Sherman, Writers House. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-4-Because Amelia smiles, Mrs. Higgins smiles as well. She thinks of her grandson in Mexico and decides to bake cookies for him. Lionel shares them with his class and teaches them a song, setting off a chain of events that spans the globe from the U.S. to Mexico to Europe and back. Stein's simple text reminds readers that what goes around comes around, and that the simplest of gestures can impact a multitude of people. Outstanding illustrations in bold, vintage Stein portray the busy streets of New York, a plaza in Mexico, a stage in Israel, an outdoor cafe in Paris, an oceanfront in Italy, and more, depicting how a simple smile brought happiness to many people all over the world. Dynamic blends of crayon and watercolor create an impressionistic scene that still conveys eye-catching detail. The visual elements will capture readers' attention, and the story offers valuable opportunities for discussion of how one person's actions can influence events far beyond their own surroundings.-C. J. Connor, Campbell County Public Library, Cold Spring, KY (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
What goes around comes around, to excellent global effect: its pouring as Amelia runs down the street, holding her smiling parents hands as they lark through puddles on comfortably shod feet. Where some kids might grumble at the weather, Amelias rain-spattered grin is so contagious that it prompts old Mrs. Higgins to bake cookies for her grandson in Mexico -- who shares them and a song with his class, which inspires one grateful student to become a teacher of dance and make a video thats shown in faraway England. The good vibes voyage on to Israel, Paris, and more, prompting a marriage, among other happy events, and eventually completing a circuit (via TV) back to New York and Amelia herself. Salutary good humor and a series of related events are both reliable picture book patterns; their up-to-date transmission here, however, is particularly effective, as are Steins cheerfully energetic illustrations in pencil, water-soluble crayon, and watercolor. His main characters are scruffy and fascinatingly individual, his settings are exuberant with color and light, and both are sure to elicit smiles in any kind of weather. joanna rudge long (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
Amelia's smile, brought on by a rain shower and seen by a neighborhood grandmother, catalyzes a cheery chain of happy consequences. The ripple of resultant good acts (the grandmother makes her grandson cookies, he teaches his class a song about cookies, one of his students then decides to become a teacher...) travels from New York to Mexico, England, Israel, Paris, Italy and finally back to New York. This streaming story, with its lively artwork and satisfying page turns, allows even young readers to see the interconnectedness of people, the effects of open-hearted deeds and the contagion of happiness. Indefatigable linework (in pencil, water soluble crayon and watercolor) encourages readers to explore every corner of the page, from every angle. Energy zigzags across the illustrations, showing each teeming locale, rendered jaggedly and joyfully. Such dizzying inclusion makes sense in a book about how we're inextricably bound together in this kooky world, but readers might feel adrift in these busy, sometimes murky pictures. There's little variation in color saturation and therefore no visual relief or fixed point of focus. Stein manages to expand and reduce the world at once, jumping across wide oceans, countries and continents while connecting the teeny-tiny lives of individuals. When the chain of smiles comes full circle, returning to Amelia and making her grin, readers smile too. A playfully profound picture book that does its part in passing on good feelings. (Picture book. 4-8)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
