Booklist Reviews
Gray, white, and sunny yellow mark the illustrations of this quiet and charming book. Heart shapes abound throughout, adding an entertaining seek-and-find element: dark clouds, pieces of the leaded-glass windows, a fence, and a giant slide and its shadow all form the shape of heart. In rhyming verse, a young girl tells of how her heart can be open wide and accepting, while, at other times, it is broken and shuttered from everything: "Some days it's a puddle. / Some days it's a stain. / Some days it is cloudy / and heavy with rain." Both the cover and one inside illustration show her planting a heart-shaped seed that, when well tended, can grow large and full, blossoming in heart-shaped flowers. It is up to her how she feels, and whether to keep her heart closed or to open it up to possibilities. Though it leans more toward an adult sensibility, this title offers an opportunity for a heart-to-heart discussion with children about emotions. Grades K-3. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.
BookPage Reviews
My Heart
BookPage Top Pick in Children's, January 2019
In author and illustrator Corinna Luyken's atmospheric new picture book, My Heart, young readers see a series of diverse children whose innermost feelings are manifested via clever metaphors and softly rendered monotype illustrations. "My heart is a window," one small child says as they stare through a window lit with vivid yellow sunlight. "Some days it is tiny," says another child, wondering at a small and delicate flower in the grass.
In spare and pleasing rhyming text, Luyken explores the fears, joys and emotional vulnerabilities of children—and the moments when their hearts are closed (like a fence) or open (like the flowers in a dazzling bouquet). Luyken juxtaposes the muted grays of pencil with lemony yellows that seem to shine from the pages in her simple, uncluttered compositions. If you linger over the artwork, you'll see that Luyken includes a subtle heart shape on each spread. Some are more pronounced than others, like the heart that forms in the shadow cast by a long and daunting slide outdoors at twilight, or the heart shapes formed in the pattern of a wrought iron fence.
A heart can be "closed . . . / or open up wide," and a young girl surrounded by luminescent yellows, with her arms spread wide in joy, proclaims, "I get to decide." This is the foundation of Luyken's sensitive story, and it's an empowering notion: Whether their hearts are closed or open, broken or full, children have autonomy over their own interior lives.
This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
Copyright 2019 BookPage Reviews.Horn Book Guide Reviews
Grayscale monotype illustrations with warm yellow highlights illustrate a lyrical text about love and emotion. The art's luminescence is an apt choice for a picture book about the intangible, feeling heart. First-person-singular text spoken by a diverse variety of children in different settings enriches the book and allows for a large range of emotions. The spare text and pictures leave room for reader reflection. Copyright 2019 Horn Book Guide Reviews.
Horn Book Magazine Reviews
Grayscale monotype illustrations with warm yellow highlights illustrate Luyken's lyrical text about love and emotion. The art's luminescence is an apt choice for a picture book about the heart—not the tangible, beating heart but the intangible, feeling one: "My heart is a window, / my heart is a slide. / My heart can be closed / or opened up wide." Luyken's decision to depict many children in minimal but varied settings as speakers of her first-person-singular text likewise enriches her project: this diverse group of children displays a range of emotions and states of being that might not have been as powerful if seen in and through a single protagonist. And, just as some of the (stylized) hearts hidden in the illustrations are less readily visible than others, some lines' meanings are more opaque than others. Instead of coming across as inaccessible or bewildering, however, the spare text and pictures leave room for reader reflection on what it might mean for one's heart to be, for example, "a puddle…a stain…[or] cloudy and heavy with rain." Culminating spreads move from starlit darkness to incandescent sunshine, concluding with a rousing, affirming declaration: "My heart is a shadow, / a light, and a guide. / Closed or open…/ I get to decide." megan dowd lambert March/April 2019 p 63 Copyright 2019 Horn Book Magazine Reviews.
Kirkus Reviews
Lucid verse and transcendent monotype prints masterfully express how a heart can be "a window…a slide…closed / or opened up wide." Soothing, simple phrasing and masterful printmaking harness metaphors to make a heart's complexity accessible to children just recognizing its many manifestations. Recurring rhyme provides an ideal cadence for reading aloud and also a reassuring assertion: Feelings can change from one moment to the next, your heart might sometimes be "cloudy and heavy with rain," but just as the verse returns to rhyme, a heart can right itself. It "can grow," and it "can mend, / and a heart that is closed can still open again." Double-page spreads, inky with coal blacks and smudgy graphite grays, find luminosity and searing beauty through the introduction of a single color, an undauntedly optimistic ginkgo yellow that surges and glows. Pencil work adds specificity (freckles, eyeglasses, buttons, blades of grass) and sometimes emotional jaggedness (pelt ing rain, a steep, rickety slide). Young readers will see themselves in this impressive book's children, kids of all racial backgrounds, who hide behind closed curtains, trudge through rain, extend a bouquet of small heart-shaped flowers, stand under the protective boughs of a wondrous tree. The final pages acknowledge a heart's myriad, sometimes-incongruous roles ("a shadow, / a light, and a guide") and joyfully assert our own, ultimate self-governance: "Closed or open… // I get to decide." Sensitive, stunning words and pictures speak directly to young hearts. (Picture book. 6-11) Copyright Kirkus 2018 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
Rhyming verse and sweet-tempered artwork by Luyken (
School Library Journal Reviews