Best (Last Licks, p. 297, etc.) offers a perfectly delightful celebration of a really great grandmother. In “the early blue of Grandma’s birthday morning,” as her mama wakes her and goes off to work, Sara hears all her neighbors going about their daily routine. Her Russian grandmother, whom Sara calls Catherine the Great, listens to Sara’s poems, comforts the neighbor’s baby by playing the Russian version of patty-cake, and cooks up a storm in preparation for her own birthday. She has mandated that there be “no presents!” but the neighbors and Sara’s mother know what to do; at the borscht-and-blintzes party, Mary Caruso sings Catherine’s favorite song, Mr. Minsky dances with her, one father, a hairdresser, does her hair, and Sara’s mother finds the picture of Catherine coming from Russia on a “big boat with a little suitcase.” Sara’s “no present” is a poem in English and an offer to teach her grandmother more. Joined here is lively language with exuberant pictures, showing, for example, the three floors of Sara’s building in cutaway, or a double-page close-up filled with the food on and company around Sara’s kitchen table. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7894-2622-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: DK Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
There is something profoundly elemental going on in Smalls’s book: the capturing of a moment of unmediated joy. It’s not melodramatic, but just a Saturday in which an African-American father and son immerse themselves in each other’s company when the woman of the house is away. Putting first things first, they tidy up the house, with an unheralded sense of purpose motivating their actions: “Then we clean, clean, clean the windows,/wipe, wipe, wash them right./My dad shines in the windows’ light.” When their work is done, they head for the park for some batting practice, then to the movies where the boy gets to choose between films. After a snack, they work their way homeward, racing each other, doing a dance step or two, then “Dad takes my hand and slows down./I understand, and we slow down./It’s a long, long walk./We have a quiet talk and smile.” Smalls treats the material without pretense, leaving it guileless and thus accessible to readers. Hays’s artwork is wistful and idyllic, just as this day is for one small boy. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-316-79899-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
Picture-book debuts for both author and illustrator result in an affectionate glimpse of intergenerational bonds. Juno loves to get letters in the red-and-blue bordered airmail envelopes that come from his grandmother, who lives in Korea, near Seoul. He cannot read Korean, but he opens the letter anyway, and learns what he can from what his grandmother has sent: a photograph of herself and her new cat, and a dried flower from her garden. When his parents read him the letter, he realizes how much he learned from the other things his grandmother mailed to him. He creates some drawings of himself, his parents, house, and dog, and sends them along with a big leaf from his swinging tree. He gets back a package that includes drawing pencils and a small airplane—the grandmother is coming to visit. The messages that can be conveyed without words, language differences between generations, and family ties across great distances are gently and affectingly handled in this first picture book. The illustrations, done in oil-paint glazes, are beautifully lit; the characters, particularly Grandmother, with her bowl of persimmons, her leafy garden, and her grey bun that looks “like a powdered doughnut,” are charming. (Picture book. 3-7)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-88252-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1999
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