Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In Gonzlez and Garcia's picture-book debut, a girl and her grandfather reflect on the cycles that characterize life, death, and renewal. "Grandpa says circles are all around us." Above the girl's head, a rainbow stretches across the sky, a vibrant half circle. The other half? It's beneath the Earth, unseen, nourishing. With this modest declaration, Gonzlez asks readers to rethink the world as one full of unceasing rebirth. A clearer example of this viewpoint soon follows. In the garden, Grandpa and the girl tend to their lettuce, carrots, and chiles, with the resulting stems, leaves, and seeds going back into the ground. "What we take from the earth we return," says Grandpa. Measured and subdued, the bare-bones story demands patience, which may irk readers with a preference for livelier stories, but the author's direct approach and light touch soften the otherwise weighty subject matter. Faded, sketched lines and arcs of dense light enclose the girl and Grandpa (both depicted with golden-brown skin) in half-formed and fully formed circles from picture to picture, while shadows and colors intertwine with people and the scenes around them. On a smaller scale, the duo notes how circles shape their bellies as well as their eyes. Yet it's the final scenea girl and her grandfather sitting near the buried ashes of their ancestorsthat brings everything full circle. In her author's note, Gonzlez, a member of the Auteca Paguame family of the Tap Pilam Coahuitecan nation, references her, and by extension her characters', mestizo heritage. Life-affirming in its quiet splendor. (author's note) (Picture book. 3-7) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

A young girl with Native American and Spanish heritage learns from her grandfather that circles are all around us. The moon, clocks, wheels, and the sun are all common circles we see almost every day, though we may not notice them. Grandfather points out that a rainbow is only half a circle; the other half is under the surface, representing that what comes from the earth goes back into it again, creating a circle of life. The warm relationship the two share is evident as the girl happily absorbs the lessons, often spiritual in nature, that her grandpa teaches. Garcia's colorful mixed-media illustrations reveal images placed upon paintings with what appears to be chalk, pen and ink, and colored pencil. A circle motif, including the arcing of the text, highlights almost every spread, emphasizing the prevalence of the shape. Joyce Sidman's Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature (2011) can be used as a companion title that also teaches about the pervasiveness of common shapes in nature.--Owen, Maryann Copyright 2017 Booklist