Some Days by María Wernicke

 

I snagged this for World Book Day. Apparently this is an Argentinian work that has been translated into English. The style of the book is very minimal, with the main color being red. The premise of the story is about a young girl who has discovered a portal that only opens up sometimes, where it isn't cold and nothing is unsafe and she can see her departed father again. She tells her mother she wishes it was open all the time.

Children's books can sometimes be touching and emotional in a way that adult books are not and even though I'm an adult reader, I find that I still do enjoy children's books on occasion because of that connection. I did not find that with SOME DAYS. I'm not sure if the translation was poor, or if this was just a not-so-great book, but it read as being very rushed and kind of nonsensical, and I'm not sure what the point was. I kept thinking of Sang Miao's THE IMMORTAL JELLYFISH, which is a much better magic-realism tale about grief and fantasy.

I can't really recommend this one. I thought about giving it a two but the illustrations weren't all that great either and there wasn't really anything about it I enjoyed.

1 out of 5 stars