Starred review from July 1, 2015
A girl her auntie used to call Cartwheel must flee from a land of war to a place where they can be safe. She finds life there hard and cold, so she takes refuge in a metaphorical blanket of words and memories from her former life. In the park one day, another little girl smiles at her, then brings her to the swings. More than that, she brings her words, and Cartwheel says them to herself, again and again. The text is exquisitely simple, and the watercolor-and-oil images complement, expand, and illuminate the words with magic and delight. Cartwheel is always brown and orange and gold, as is the blanket she weaves in her imagination of the words and sounds of home. The other girl is blue and green and pink and pale yellow, and she brings new words to her friend in the shape of origami forms. As Cartwheel weaves those words into a second blanket of those colors and shapes, they unfold on the page in beauty. Loneliness, cultural displacement, tentative friendship, and an explosion of sharing and kindness are accessible even to very young readers. The final image of Cartwheel teaching her friend how do a cartwheel tugs at the heart with joy. An amazingly lovely import from Australia. (Picture book. 4-10)
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January 1, 2016
K-Gr 2-Following a war, Cartwheel and her aunt emigrate from their rural village to a westernized city. Under a barrage of foreign sights and sounds, Cartwheel finds comfort by wrapping herself in a "blanket" of familiar words and memories: "When I went out, it was like standing under a waterfall of strange sounds.... It made me feel alone." One day at the park, a blonde girl waves to her. Feeling scared, Cartwheel doesn't respond. Eventually they connect, and the girl starts teaching Cartwheel words, but Cartwheel is very self-conscious: "Sometimes I felt silly and I wanted to cry." At home, she practices the words until they become soft and familiar, and she starts to create a new "blanket" that represents her new life. Eventually she finds balance between the two. The blanket metaphor is powerful, and the way that sounds are depicted through shape and line works well. Cartwheel and her home are shown in bright warm colors, while the new country is portrayed through cool colors. Although Cartwheel and her aunt are the only nonwhite characters, their foreignness is represented through the color palette rather than dress or customs; care is taken to show that the new city is full of people dressed strangely and doing strange things. Unfortunately, the friendship is one-sided; rather than sharing culture and language between them, the girl does all the teaching and guiding, and Cartwheel isn't shown as having anything to offer. VERDICT This visually powerful book may resonate with recent immigrants. A solid addition for libraries.-Anna Haase Krueger, Ramsey County Library, MN
Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
September 1, 2015
Preschool-G Auntie used to call me Cartwheel. Then came the war. The first spread shows a joyful little girl in her Sudanese village. In the next, she is huddled with her auntie and other commuters in a big-city train. Indeed, nothing is the same. Cartwheel doesn't speak English, so she feels like she is standing under a waterfall of strange sounds. Both text and art arrestingly describe how the girl wants to wrap herself in a blanket made of her own words and memories of her old world. Then one day a girl waves to her, and soon they are playing together, but words are still a problem, so it is up to the new friend to find a way they can communicate: origami figures. Slowly Cartwheel begins to feel words are softening their hard edges, and she makes a new blanket from them. The illustrations, a combination of watercolor and oils, heighten the effect of the thought-provoking story. Just the right format for children to think about immigrants and friendship.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)
July 1, 2016
In this Australian import, Cartwheel and her auntie leave their war-torn home and immigrate to the safety of a new country. Evocative, motif- and metaphor-filled watercolor and oil illustrations visualize Cartwheel's difficult adjustment to a new language and landscape ("Even the wind felt strange"). An emerging (though oddly one-sided) friendship, which is compared to a comforting blanket, eases her transition.
(Copyright 2016 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
October 7, 2013
Cartwheel and her auntie have to leave their country because of a war, and end up in ‘this country to be safe’. The country feels strange, the people are strange, even the wind is strange, and the language is very strange; cold and hard, it makes Cartwheel want to stay under her old ‘blanket’ forever. This blanket is in fact a cocoon of Cartwheel’s own sounds and words, her own language. Eventually Cartwheel makes a friend and starts to learn a new language, ‘weaving’ a new blanket of sounds and words, and presumably, new experiences. Freya Blackwood has used two distinct palettes to express Cartwheel’s sense of loneliness—warm colours for Cartwheel’s old world, and cool, sombre colours for the new. This works very well, as do the shapes she uses to symbolise the new words, which look like origami shapes. This might be confusing for very young readers, but could generate interesting discussion about what words would look like, if we could actually see them. Blackwood’s illustrations always enhance and extend the text, and in this case they not only do that, but also bring the difficult, nebulous problem of deracination to life, making it accessible to young readers. This is recommended for children aged four and up.
Louise Pfanner is an author, illustrator and bookseller