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Summary
Summary
When siblings Adèle and Simon visit their uncle in China, he buys them each gifts for their trip. Simon picks out a hat, a flute, a fan, and other small items, while his sister selects a camera to photograph their journey. As soon as they're packed and ready, it's time to set off with Uncle Sydney to explore! In a series of postcards home to their mother, Adèle describes each of the places they visit and the adventures they have... and, of course, what item Simon managed to lose at each stop along the way. On a silk farm in Shanghai, he loses his scarf. Along the Great Wall, his hat blows right off his head. By the end of the trip, Simon has misplaced all of his belongings! But when Adèle develops her photographs, she and her brother discover that they can see each of Simon's lost items in the background of the pictures.
Barbara McClintock's meticulous research and intricate pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations bring this book to life, capturing the essence of each of the culturally and historically significant sites that Adèle and Simon visit. Children will love poring over the pictures to find Simon's lost items, and parents will value the authenticity of the art and story.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 3-This addition to the children's saga finds Adèle and Simon touring China with their uncle. Told through postcards written by Adèle, this adventure is a true delight. With stops in Hong Kong, Tongli, and Shanghai (to name a few locales), this is a beautifully blended masterpiece of art and history. As with the other books in this series, Simon loses items along the way, prompting a fun search-and-find aspect that readers will love. The endnotes contain blurbs about each location, including significant historical information. VERDICT The intricate, vintage-style illustrations and interesting historical facts will be sure to please a wide audience. Young armchair travelers will want to pore over this one.-Jasmine L. Precopio, Fox Chapel Area School District, Pittsburgh © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Sometime around the turn of the 20th century, two white French children, Adle and Simon, journey throughout historical China with their photographer uncle, Sidney.Before they set off, Uncle Sidney buys the two travelers gifts, including a camera for Adle and an abacus, a scroll, knapsack, and other items for Simon. The illustrated list of objects proves helpful later on. As they travel from place to place, Adle writes postcards to her mama about the many sights they see as well as cataloging the gifts that Simon loses along the way. But, as Adles photographs later reveal, each object was there all along. Much as in the popular search-and-find book Wheres Waldo, readers can search for Simons lost objects among the teeming double-page illustrations of 11 diverse locales. These include detailed renderings, done in McClintocks trademark, vibrant pen-and-inkand-watercolor style, of a bustling marketplace in Peking, a complex of monasteries in the Wudang Mountains, and the sprawling carved hillsides in southern China. With the childrens route outlined in red, the opening period map of China provides great perspective on how vast and varied this country was and still is. Since this is a historical view of China, many of the Chinese men wear queues, which can lead to further conversations with young readers. A pleasurable way to explore China, complete with insightful authors notes for each locale in the backmatter. (Picture book. 4-10) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Globe-trotting siblings Adele and Simon are off to China with their uncle Sidney in McClintock's third outing with this pair. Following the epistolary, seek-and-find format of the previous titles, the children travel to a silk farm in Shanghai, Peking's bustling Forbidden City, a monastery in Xi'an, the Great Wall, and more. In his typical fashion, Simon outfitted in a traditional Chinese jacket and cap loses one of his belongings at each stop, whether clothing or something from his knapsack. Every postcard Adele sends home mentions the item Simon has lost, giving readers the opportunity to examine the picture to find it. Lovely, detailed ink illustrations are rendered in antique hues, perfect for the early twentieth-century setting, but locating the tiny, missing objects may prove too challenging for young readers. Happily, a visual answer key appears at the end of the book, along with historical notes on each of the locations visited. McClintock details her efforts to ensure historical accuracy, though some may find the tourist perspective of this book slightly voyeuristic.--Smith, Julia Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
"GRIT" is the word we'd use nowadays to describe the admirable persistence of Ox, the steadfast suitor in "XO, OX: A Love Story," Adam Rex's epistolary romance between a simple ox and an ohso-glamorous gazelle. Gazelle is famous and spends her days draped over a chaise longue, answering fan mail and preening in the mirror. She has a fabulously long neck and is elegant and poised. Or as Ox puts it in his very first letter: "You are so graceful and fine. Even when you are running from tigers you are like a ballerina who is running from tigers." No point in wondering what Ox - who likes to read and paint and play guitar, who builds birdhouses and tends bonsai - sees in such a vain, haughty creature. Love is love. Gazelle dispatches a form letter and a signed publicity photo. (Sharing this book with my 7-year-old reading partner, I had to make a brief digression to explain form letters. A furrowed brow, but we moved on.) Ox doesn't get the message and persists in his wooing, hilariously misconstruing Gazelle's barbed replies. His good-natured obstinance finally exasperates Gazelle, who pens an unequivocal rejection: "I could never love an animal that is ... so thick and ungraceful and awful and unlovely. And unlovable. I could never, ever love an ox." Is Ox really a simpleton who doesn't understand when he's being shown the door - or is he a master of psychological manipulation? We'll never know. He does get the girl, though. Scott Campbell's ("Hug Machine") watercolor-and-colored-pencil illustrations in dusty pinks and greens and terra cottas are charming and wonderfully expressive. Will some of the nuances of the humor be lost on this book's target audience? Perhaps, but they'll absorb the aspirational message anyway - shoot for the stars, and don't give up! - and their parents will have a chuckle. Ox and Gazelle may be from different walks of life, but that's nothing compared with the physical distance separating the letter-writing pair in "Pen Pals," the French author-illustrator Alexandra Pichard's first book to be translated into English. Following in the tradition of William Steig's "Amos and Boris," but with less high-stakes drama, it's a story about a budding friendship between two creatures who inhabit different worlds. Oscar the ant and Bill the octopus become pen pals as part of a school assignment and quickly realize how much they have in common despite their many degrees of separation. Both enjoy video games and playing table tennis, for instance, although Bill has to use glow-in-the-dark balls; it's murky down under the sea. There are plenty of giggle-inducing jokes like that. Bill has poor eyesight and wears glasses, while Oscar has to be alert to the dangers of falling leaves come autumn. Mail delivery is accomplished via a mouse on a motorcycle who hands off to a penguin in a boat who dives down to Bill's house on the ocean floor. Emailing would be so much easier, but for this generation of children at least, where's the novelty in that? Pichard's minimalist illustrations in primary colors are visually pleasing and fun. And as Oscar and Bill begin to send each other little tokens of friendship - sea-lion-wool socks and a tube of sunscreen for Oscar; a four-leaf clover and knitted mittens (alas, only six) for Bill - kids will enjoy looking to see which new items have been added to the otherwise unchanging tableaus of the ant and the octopus sitting at their respective writing desks. Oscar and Bill are clearly a French ant and octopus, though it's curious that the book's American publisher chose not to make this explicit, so as to orient the reader. The translation struck a few false notes, to my ear. I doubt many American 7-year-olds would claim table tennis as a hobby, but if they did, I think they'd call it Ping-Pong, for example. And Oscar's teacher promises a class trip to the sea if they keep up their grades, but how are Americans to understand the class average, 14.5/20? These are not major sticking points, and don't detract from the enjoyment of the book, but they do sow a bit of confusion. Circumstances intervene, and Oscar never does get to take that trip to the sea. But Barbara McClintock's continenthopping siblings are off on a big new adventure, this one narrated in postcards, in "Lost and Found: Adèle and Simon in China." The third book in the series takes them to Hong Kong, where they meet up with their Uncle Sidney and embark on a cross-country tour of China circa 1905. They visit the Great Wall and bustling Peking, ride camels in the Gobi Desert, learn Chinese brush painting at a Buddhist monastery and float on the Li River, where the locals ply the ancient art of cormorant fishing. Their journey is plotted on a beautiful 19th-century map of the Chinese Empire; they sure cover a lot of ground! Adèle reports on their travels in postcards to their mother, Madame Trouvée, a little wink (if you know a bit of French) at the seek-and-find conceit that readers will be familiar with from the earlier books in this series: Happygo-lucky Simon manages to lose something at each place they visit - a hat, a flute, a drinking bowl, a paper scroll. And no wonder! Travel is disorienting, and there's so much to look at in McClintock's lavishly detailed pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations. The muted colors are lovely and the details extraordinary, though a magnifying glass might come in handy when hunting for Simon's missing items. A lost yellow scarf is not easy to distinguish from the many other garments in the same shade of yellow, and a little red abacus is camouflaged among so many tiny candied apples on a stick. What do those taste like, I'd love to know. Adèle doesn't say in her postcard. The seek-and-find element is a fun way to encourage young readers to linger on each scene, but as my son interacted with the book, I began to wonder if it also facilitates the opposite: a kind of goal-oriented skimming. And once the items are spotted, will a child want to return to the book? On a character level the story is slight; the travel narrative is primarily a scaffolding for the marvelous illustrations, which are mini-history-lessons in themselves. The endnotes, which are not pitched at the 4-to-8 set, provide historical context and fascinating tidbits. Who knew that a silkworm cocoon, when unraveled, consists of a single half-mile-long filament? This book is best explored by a child along with an adult. Flip to the endnotes and annotate as you go. I particularly liked the parting message. Simon's missing belongings, it turns out, were ah "captured" in the photographs Adèle took on the trip; but they are never recovered. Travel is about experiences, we are reminded; we can do without the things. ? julia livshin is a freelance writer and editor and a formereditor at The Atlantic.