Two picture-book newcomers create a remembrance of a special friendship from a summer day in an African American community in the rural south of the 1940s. Miss Dessa is an elderly lady who lives down the road from the narrator and her sibling, Baby Sister. Miss Dessa takes care of their skinned knees and bruised elbows, but on the day she turns her ankle, their roles are switched. The girls spend the day taking care of her: helping with her quilting, bringing her lunch, picking her flowers, putting her to bed. Throughout the day, the girls get in a lot of play, too: dressing up, shooting chinaberries, and swinging on a tire swing. Most of the time, Marshall's acrylic paintings fit the mood of the evocative text well, capturing the details of Miss Dessa's home and the pace of a lazy summer afternoon. It's all the more jarring, then, when there are incongruities between text and art: Miss Dessa is told to stay off her foot, yet is pictured in at least four different chairs; she is sockless in one scene but wears socks (or has bandages on both ankles) in another; her injured foot is down in one scene, and elevated on a pillow in another, later scene; the girls get Miss Dessa ready for bed while a clock marks the time as only half-past six; the girls go to bed a short time later, and the sky is dark. These problems don't ruin the generous sentiments of the story, but they render them less forceful. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-880000-39-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Continuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long (The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. After the big new yellow tractor, crowds of overalls-clad locals and a red fire engine all fail to pull her out, the little tractor (who had been left behind the barn to rust after the arrival of the new tractor) comes putt-puff-puttedy-chuff-ing down the hill to entice his terrified bovine buddy successfully back to dry ground. Short on internal logic but long on creamy scenes of calf and tractor either gamboling energetically with a gaggle of McCloskey-like geese through neutral-toned fields or resting peacefully in the shade of a gnarled tree (apple, not cork), the episode will certainly draw nostalgic adults. Considering the author’s track record and influences, it may find a welcome from younger audiences too. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-25248-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
SEEN & HEARD
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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