From “The Breaking News.”Both “The Breaking News” and “Be Kind” lean more heavily on words. In “The Breaking News,” Sarah Lynne Reul’s timely text begins with a young girl’s reminiscence: “I remember when we heard the bad news.” Next we see dark-skinned Mom and Dad staring in alarm at the words “breaking news” on the television. The news is unspecified. The girl looks worriedly at her parents, capturing the story’s essence with efficiency and poignancy.
The girl’s emotions are sensitively portrayed throughout. At first enthusiastic about trying to make those around her feel better, she grows discouraged when her attempts fail. “Maybe there is nothing I can do to help in a big way. I feel small.”
There are mildly jarring bumps in the text: an abrupt switch from recollection to present tense, and a confusing line that appears to be from the girl’s consciousness when it should rightly be attributed to her teacher. By contrast, the heavily outlined images are steady and solid, including the closing spreads of the girl and her family planting flowers, which circle back to a scene at the beginning, affirming the resilience that can result when small acts are focused on community.
The wordiest of the four books also skirts closest to the didactic edge. “Be Kind” begins when curly-headed Tanisha becomes an object of derision after spilling her grape juice at school. The narrator, a dark-haired child with pale skin, flounders in an effort to comfort her, then wonders, “What does it mean to be kind anyway?”
The narrator imagines possibilities, from baking cookies for a lonely neighbor to “telling Desmond I like his blue boots,” then muses: “Sticking up for someone when other kids aren’t kind is really hard. (And really scary.)”
Tanisha and Kerascoët’s Vanessa are both depicted as dark-complected, with lighter-skinned children befriending them. White-savior narratives? Or examples of the dominant culture taking responsibility for dismantling racism? The distinction is one ripe for discussion.
“Be Kind” concludes with the child’s hope that a small act of kindness toward Tanisha might “spill out of our school” and expand to encircle the world. The vignettes portraying “the world” include references to familiar architecture (pyramids, the Taj Mahal, pagodas), presumably to assist in identifying location; also, alas, with the potential to reinforce stereotypes. Even so, the combination of Pat Zietlow Miller’s earnest text and Jen Hill’s attractive images is likely to find a receptive audience among adults wanting to spark a conversation with children. These days, it seems more important than ever for books to show young people how to act with thoughtfulness, civility and kindness — growing up as they are amid powerful adults who consistently fail to do so.
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