Starred Review for Kirkus Reviews (Tue Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

All kinds of emotions can provoke tears.A beige-skinned, dark-haired child zooms down a hill on a bicycle, thrilled by the high speed, but crashes after riding over a small rock. Nursing a bloody knee, the protagonist bursts into tears. Thus begins a sensitive, nuanced tale that normalizes crying and makes clear that it is a part of life. The young narrator tears up from joy while playing with Dad and laughing deep belly laughs, from rage when another kid crushes the protagonist's origami frog, from shame at letting down the team and losing a baseball game, from fear of the dark, even from seeing Grandpa's grief and love for Grandma, who's deceased. Displaying an age-appropriate range of emotions and a profound maturity, the empathetic youngster comes to feel at home with these complicated feelings. Townes' honest and resonant prose grounds readers in the protagonist's life and offers superb opportunities for discussion about social-emotional development. With stirring echoes of Ezra Jack Keats in palette and line, Miyares' illustrations are immersive without being overwhelming. Each scene presents a tapestry of saturated hues and tones-reds, blues, yellows-that convey the way this child experiences the world. A repeated motif of teardrops, appearing in different colors and sizes, further evokes the complexity of emotions. (This book was reviewed digitally.)The perfect offering for children who want to understand why they cry. (Picture book. 3-6)

School Library Journal Starred Review (Tue Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

PreS-Gr 4— Childhood is full of emotional ups and downs, and in this beautifully illustrated story, readers follow a boy through a series of life events and the emotions they raise. These universal experiences and the tearful reactions they produce will resonate with readers of all ages. While crying is a natural human response, it is a challenging experience, especially for boys, due to cultural taboos in some communities. This title shows a young boy and his father wrestling and laughing so hard that tears come out. The young boy also cries with his grandfather as they remember Grandma. The illustrations, starting with the cover showing eight different tearful expressions of the boy, capture the range of emotions that can produce tears and offer readers an emotional vocabulary through which they can express their own tearful episodes. In one, it is the love he feels for his baby sister that makes him well up. In another instance, the narration explains that with the release of tears, his emotions can fit in him again. VERDICT Highly effective for communicating the appropriateness of tearful expressions, this title will be useful in social-emotional learning experiences for starting conversations about our human reactions to being alive.— John Scott

Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 04 00:00:00 CDT 2024)

All kinds of emotions can provoke tears.A beige-skinned, dark-haired child zooms down a hill on a bicycle, thrilled by the high speed, but crashes after riding over a small rock. Nursing a bloody knee, the protagonist bursts into tears. Thus begins a sensitive, nuanced tale that normalizes crying and makes clear that it is a part of life. The young narrator tears up from joy while playing with Dad and laughing deep belly laughs, from rage when another kid crushes the protagonist's origami frog, from shame at letting down the team and losing a baseball game, from fear of the dark, even from seeing Grandpa's grief and love for Grandma, who's deceased. Displaying an age-appropriate range of emotions and a profound maturity, the empathetic youngster comes to feel at home with these complicated feelings. Townes' honest and resonant prose grounds readers in the protagonist's life and offers superb opportunities for discussion about social-emotional development. With stirring echoes of Ezra Jack Keats in palette and line, Miyares' illustrations are immersive without being overwhelming. Each scene presents a tapestry of saturated hues and tones-reds, blues, yellows-that convey the way this child experiences the world. A repeated motif of teardrops, appearing in different colors and sizes, further evokes the complexity of emotions. (This book was reviewed digitally.)The perfect offering for children who want to understand why they cry. (Picture book. 3-6)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

A tan-skinned, brown-haired child who first appears in a T-shirt and shorts describes, over several multi-page sequences, their experience of crying, including emotional reactions, physical sensations, and tear-jerking scenarios. Sometimes physical pain summons tears, like a fall from a bike, painted in boldly stroked, warm-hued moment-by-moment vignettes by Miyares (Nell Plants a Tree): “Blood trickles down my knee/ And it stings./ And the sting hurts my eyes/ And I cry.” A tickle match with a parent ends in tearful laughter for both. Frustration, too, brings tears, as when a child kicks “my very best” origami frog to a friend: “My whole body is a volcano/ That rumbles and roars...// And I erupt// With red-hot lava tears/ That I cry.” Failure, fear, joy, and shared grief (the child’s grandfather weeps tears, “And I catch them like you catch a cold/ And we cry”) are all times that people may tear up. And that’s okay, Townes (Spellbound) reassures readers, supplying language to describe experiences and feelings in this tightly focused resource that examines how “when I let my tears out/ My feelings fit perfectly inside my body.” Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Stephanie Fretwell-Hill, Red Fox Literary. Illustrator’s agency: Studio Goodwin Sturges. (Sept.)