Stories from Pat Cummings, Minfong Ho, Jean Craighead George, Alma Flor Ada, and other award-winning children’s and young-adult writers tackle a topic that transcends race, ethnicity, and culture: grandmothers. Some are tributes to the unconditional love, courage, and talents received from grandmothers. Some pay homage to their sacrifices, such as Ji-Li Jiang’s “To My Nai Nai” in which the author recounts her grandmothers’ arranged marriage, young widowhood, decision not to remarry, and dedication to her grandchildren during the difficult Chinese Cultural Revolution. Others see their grandmothers in a new light, as real, even sexy, women as in “The Naked Truth,” by Cynthia Letitch Smith, who wonders about the identity of the carved, naked lady in her grandparents’ basement. When authors could choose between grandmothers, some, rather than writing about their doting grandmothers, opted to write the more painful story. In “Granny Was a Gambler,” for example, Beverley Naidoo pieces together the life of her grandmother before she was locked away in a mental institution in South Africa and became a dark family secret, and in “The Best Parts,” Joan Abelove attempts to understand her grandmother’s emotional detachment, especially during the family’s most trying times. This collection, with compiler Christensen’s (Woody Guthrie, 2001, etc.) dry-point illustrations, inspired by the authors’ own photographs, becomes a record of adversity of the women who forged paths when fewer opportunities were available to their gender. For both authors and readers, it is also a process of understanding from where we came and where we are going. While all of the contributions are deeply moving, they do not all work as children’s stories. Most require an adult perspective to be appreciated fully, so don’t limit this to the children’s collection. Share it with women of all ages. (Short stories. 12 )
Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-029109-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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