Tag Jacques Goldstyn

Sketch

jillrbennett Leave a comment

Sketch
Jacques Goldstyn
Greystone Kids

Almost as soon he’s born the baby seems a little different, in appearance especially. His parents adore him and name him Sketch. They watch avidly as he does amusing things, a bit wild on occasion.

However the place where the family lives is a perfect town with straight streets and identical houses where everything has a place and everything works on time. Orthodoxy rules.

It’s when Sketch encounters other children that things get a bit challenging, though the boy isn’t bothered; he merely gets on with what he likes to do – investigate and invent. When he starts school, the headteacher looks with displeasure at his scruffiness and expects trouble from Sketch. His teachers look disapprovingly at his writing – a jumble of lowercase and capital letters – and tell him to write as the others do and they certainly don’t appreciate his active imagination. One member of staff, the art teacher . Miss Beauregard, does create an environment wherein Sketch is happy; she loves his work, which is so different from that of the other pupils and gives him words of encouragement, telling him to persevere.

At High School, Sketch bonds with some other artistic students – Flow, a dancer, dark, handsome Muddy who has an air of mystery about him

and Doodle who is forever changing his shape and form; these new friends give him strength as they become inseparable. Part of that strength enables him to turn down their idea of moving away, for Sketch has a rather different idea.

This whimsical picture book is an ode to divergent thinking and creativity that will appeal especially to imaginative readers, including those older than the usual picture book audience.

What Will I Discover? / The Stars

jillrbennett Leave a comment

These are both Greystone Kids titles – thanks to the publisher for sending them for review

What Will I Discover?
Tanya Lloyd Kyi and Rachel Qiuqi

‘Sometimes I think scientists know everything about the world’ muses the girl narrator of this book. She goes on to mention several examples of some of what they have discovered: that otters tie themselves to kelp to prevent them floating off during sleep, that the feet of sea stars are tubular; that macaws have bony tongues to help crack hard shells and glass frogs have see through skin to help them hide. She also talks of fossil evidence, looks afar out into space and within the human brain where nerve cells communicate with one another. But even so, our narrator has some yet unanswered questions: why does every humpback whale sing a different song? How many bits of rock bounce and collide in a sandstorm? How do trees learn to communicate through their roots; what tiny creatures hide in the ice of Antarctica and how do they manage to survive?

Then closer to home, ‘How do ideas pop into my head?’ and finally her biggest question of all – that of the title, which is one only she can answer.

The last page asks readers to search back through the book’s pages for 10 tiny images and, enthusiastically underwrites ‘investigating, inventing, or creating’ as necessary qualities for scientists, concluding that despite extensive research in all STEAM areas, we humans still have so much to learn.
Tanya Lloyd Kyi offers an open invitation for young readers be they at home or in the classroom: always be curious and look for answers. This is underscored through Rachel Qiuqi’s alluring scenes including those of seascapes, the jungle, the desert, flora and fauna, dinosaurs, outer space and neurons within the brain.
Narrative non-fiction recommended for KS1 learners.

Also likely to appeal to readers with inquiring minds is

The Stars
Jacques Goldstyn (translated by Helen Mister)

Set in Montreal, this story introduces Yakov who acts as the book’s narrator. he’s the older brother of three sisters who he has to take to the park every day when he’d much prefer to be reading about space. Into space is somewhere he aspires to go one day in the future; meanwhile he constructs rocket ships from empty packaging, His father is against his aspirations but his mother is more encouraging. 

One day at the park Yakov meets a girl, Aisha, reading about space while supposedly minding her siblings. It turns out that she and her family have just moved close to where Yakov’s family live. With a shared interest the two become great friends and spend time star gazing together. Both fathers are far from happy and even erect a wall between their two homes to prevent Yakov and Aisha from meeting.

Years pass and Yakov becomes a scientist working at NASA. One day he attends a big international astronomy conference and guess who is also attending. Since then they’ve not been apart.

Author/illustrator Jacques Goldstyn presents a fair amount of information in telling this story of two young people who, against the odds, pursue their passionate interest in the stars and the universe.