Jen Corace

When Nanda is small, her world is as well, encompassed by her mother's cradling arms. As she grows, so too does her world, her horizons expanding as her knowledge and experience do. Growing up, going to college, eventually becoming an astronaut, she eventually sees the world as small again. When viewed from space, that is...

A lovely book, one which explores the individual's relationship to their world, and their changing perceptions of that world as they grow, Small World pairs a poetic text show more from first-time author Ishta Mercurio with gorgeous artwork from illustrator Amy Corace, who has also worked on such titles as Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Little Pea. I appreciated the author's afterword here, which speaks of the inspiration she took from a photograph of some Indian women scientists, and I appreciated the positive message about dreaming big. Recommended to anyone looking for children's stories about growing up and making one's dreams a reality, or about a person's relationship to the wider world. show less

A delightful little picture-book from Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Jen Corace, Little Pea combines minimal text and minimal illustrations, achieving the maximum effect in charm and entertainment. Little Pea is a happy youngster, who loves his Papa and Mama Pea, and enjoys playing with his friends. The only discordant element in his life comes at mealtime, when his parents insist that he eat his candy, before he can have a delicious bowl of spinach for dessert...

This charming reversal of the show more usual mealtime argument involving vegetables, is sure to please young children, who will enjoy all the many sounds of disgust Little Pea makes while being forced to eat FIVE(!) pieces of candy. "Blech," indeed! Jen Corace's illustrations are simple but effective, conveying a sense of motion and feeling. All in all, this strikes me as a book ideally suited for storyhour with young children, and while it may not convince fussy eaters to mend their ways, it will hold up a humorous mirror for their feelings and behavior. show less

This might be my favorite children's book I've read in a long time! The words used are so much fun and the pictures help to clarify the more intense ones. For example, "whirligigs" and "scaffolds". I love how it uses these big words and creative imagery to depict simple things, such as explaining mountains and snowflakes like "Pinecone-prackled mountains and the microscopic elegance of fractals in the snow." While reading it, it felt full of imagination and also realism, mixed with lots of show more hope and inspiration for the future. As it follows the plot of Nanda as she grows up, it also gets more intense with its words and phrases.
The overall message of this book would be coping with change. Nanda grows and her world expands, but it comes full circle by ending with the same phrase as it starts with. show less

Following upon their immensely successful Little Pea and Little Hoot, Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Jen Corace once again deliver a tale of a youngster whose experience is the inversion of some common childhood problem, whether it be the disinclination to eat vegetables, or a reluctance to go to bed. In Little Oink, the eponymous hero likes nothing so much as to be clean, but his parents insist that all good pigs must make a mess, and will not permit him to go out and play, until his room is show more looking like a pigsty...

I enjoyed this clever play on the classic parent-child conflict concerning the necessity of cleaning one's room, and thought Corace's ink and watercolor illustrations were charming. Little details, like Mama Pig's vintage glasses, added to the sense of visual whimsy. But while I think Little Oink will probably be a crowd-pleaser, particularly with young children who don't like to clean their rooms, somehow I didn't think it quite the equal of Little Pea. Whether this is owing to some difference in quality between the two, or merely to the fact that the novelty of concept has worn off, I couldn't really say. Still, this was an enjoyable picture-book, well worth the time of anyone who reads to (and with) toddlers. show less