Cave Paintings
Author: Jairo Buitrago
Illustrator: Rafael Yockteng
Groundwood Books
Ages: 4-7 years old
If the goal of reading books is to transport you to another world and to broaden your understanding of your own, this book is a hit.
Set in a futuristic world where space travel and aliens are everyday, mundane occurrences, is the story of a little boy who is off to visit his grandma across the galaxy. It’s a familiar story set in a fantastical future.
The writing is simplistic, a little too simple for the five and over set, but it’s the illustrations that make this book quite a treat. When I read it to my six-year-old twins, we spent an hour pouring over the images, and another hour painting our own images of what the future might look like, and what we might miss about our world right now. If the goal of reading books is to transport you to another world and to broaden your understanding of your own, this book is a hit.
My one quibble with the book is that it lacks diversity in its human characters. This may seem like an odd criticism, given the various colors, shapes, and sizes represented in the alien population. But, looking at the human characters, they all appear one dimensional. The child, his grandmother, the flight attendant, the most human-like alien at the end of the book, even the tiny supporting human characters in the book are all light-skinned/White. I would like to think some of us with more melanin will survive to see this future.
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More books for this Age Group can be found here.
My thanks to Groundwood Books for providing a Review Copy of this book. All opinions provided herein are my own.
Please, leave comments! I love a HEALTHY exchange of ideas. After all, critical thinking is essential to life.
Anjali Sanghvi–Contributor
Anjali (She, Her, Ms.) is the mother of twins, akin to being the mother of dragons. Hailing from Kenya, Anjali has made a career of graduating into recessions and pivoting her experiences to fit ever-shifting worlds. Currently residing in Columbia, MD, Anjali is an accidental homeschooler hoping to raise rebellious anarchists.
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