Day: May 13, 2020

Green on Green by Dianne White

| Tasha

Green on Green by Dianne White

Green on Green by Dianne White, illustrated by Felicita Sala (9781481462785)

Explore the changing colors of seasons through this poetic picture book. The colors slide together, dynamically playing in the seasons in ways that surprise and delight. Yellow on green is lemonade and bees buzzing. Spring is new bird song, rain and breeze, yellow on green. Summer comes in on turquoise water with beaches and swimming. It is also peaches, sun and shade, blue on green. Fall is cinnamon and squirrels, brown on green. Corn, pumpkins and candles too. Winter is white with snow and gray skies, white on green. Green as spring returns.

There are so many season books, many that I really enjoy. This one though is very special. It takes colors and shows young readers how they pair and shift and change over the course of the seasons. Green stays constant, always there under snow or next to blue waters. The poetry here invites readers to explore things more deeply, to look beyond the first color they think of for a season. It reads aloud beautifully, the measures actually reading aloud better than they do silently on the page. It turns into a dance like the colors themselves.

Sala’s illustrations are lush and colorful, showing a family of color who experience the seasons together. Children will also notice the mother’s stomach growing rounder as the months pass and then a baby appearing. Throughout there is a strong feeling of family and community.

A lovely new way to see colors and seasons. Appropriate for ages 4-6.

Reviewed from copy provided by Beach Lane Books.

Daring Darleen, Queen of the Screen by Anne Nesbet

| Tasha

Daring Darleen, Queen of the Screen by Anne Nesbet

Daring Darleen, Queen of the Screen by Anne Nesbet (9781536206197)

Darleen has grown up in the movie industry, first appearing as a baby and now at age twelve as “Daring Darleen” in a series of silent films. It is 1914 and the trend is to have the worlds of film and real life converge, so Darleen’s uncles make a plan for her to be kidnapped from outside a movie theater while being filmed by them. Everything seems to be going to plan until Darleen is snatched by the wrong kidnappers and discovers that she has been taken along with Victorine, a girl just her age who is an heiress. The two must figure out how to escape, using Darleen’s natural penchant for heights and daring moves that her dead mother also had. Still, she had promised her father to keep her feet on the ground, but that’s hard to do as her adventures continue almost like being in a real screenplay.

There is so much to love here! Nesbet creates the daring and inventions of early film-making in this middle-grade novel. The chapters are meant to be episodes, some offering a great cliffhanger until the next installment. The series of adventures makes for a page-turner of a book with two girls at its center who form a grand friendship along the way and adore one another for being just who they are.

Darleen is a heroine through and through from her day job in front of the camera but even more so in real life as she skillfully figures out puzzles, finds ways to escape, and does it all with real courage. In many ways, Victorine is her opposite. She wants to tell the truth at all costs, knows all sorts of facts and loves books and travel. The two together form an unstoppable force. It is also great to see Nesbet pay homage to Alice Guy Blache by having her as a secondary character in the novel.

A grand adventure of a novel that will have readers enthralled. Appropriate for ages 9-12.

Reviewed from e-galley provided by Candlewick.