My Heart

December 15, 2018
Lucid verse and transcendent monotype prints masterfully express how a heart can be "a window...a slide...closed / or opened up wide."Soothing, simple phrasing and masterful printmaking harness metaphors to make a heart's complexity accessible to children just recognizing its many manifestations. Recurring rhyme provides an ideal cadence for reading aloud and also a reassuring assertion: Feelings can change from one moment to the next, your heart might sometimes be "cloudy and heavy with rain," but just as the verse returns to rhyme, a heart can right itself. It "can grow," and it "can mend, / and a heart that is closed can still open again." Double-page spreads, inky with coal blacks and smudgy graphite grays, find luminosity and searing beauty through the introduction of a single color, an undauntedly optimistic ginkgo yellow that surges and glows. Pencil work adds specificity (freckles, eyeglasses, buttons, blades of grass) and sometimes emotional jaggedness (pelting rain, a steep, rickety slide). Young readers will see themselves in this impressive book's children, kids of all racial backgrounds, who hide behind closed curtains, trudge through rain, extend a bouquet of small heart-shaped flowers, stand under the protective boughs of a wondrous tree. The final pages acknowledge a heart's myriad, sometimes-incongruous roles ("a shadow, / a light, and a guide") and joyfully assert our own, ultimate self-governance: "Closed or open... // I get to decide."Sensitive, stunning words and pictures speak directly to young hearts. (Picture book. 6-11)

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2019

PreS-Gr 2-This message of this quiet book should be shouted from the rooftops. The theme is elusive at first as are the soft, somewhat tentative pictures. The story begins with a heart in a garden waiting to be nurtured by a little girl. The poetic text describes the heart in a number of unexpected ways. It's a window that can be opened or closed and sometimes it is a puddle or a stain. These metaphorical descriptions move children away from the anatomical and utile aspects of the heart (the pumper of blood with chambers and ventricles, etc.) and offers the idea of the heart as a reflection of the child in the world. The final words carry a lot of power: "I get to decide." The illustrations are crafted with water-based inks and pencils and predominantly feature gray and yellow, dark and light. Throughout, the unifying visual element is a yellow heart in a variety of forms. This can be read to the very youngest of listeners, but even upper elementary children would benefit tremendously from the ideas in this book. Educators can also use this work to show students the different meanings for a single word and the artistic use of metaphor in writing. VERDICT This must-buy for librarians and teachers has myriad educational uses; it begs to be read aloud, and it is a masterful blending of text and illustration.-Joan Kindig, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.