The first day of first grade looms, and Little Cliff has sadly lined up his toys to bid goodbye: “ ‘I can’t play with y’all no more. I gotta go to Miss Maxey’s school way down the road, a million miles from here. I know you gonna miss me, ’cause I miss y’all already.’ ” Next morning, great-grandmother Mama Pearl accompanies him to the playground—where he delightedly discovers that, contrary to what the grown-ups around him have been implying, there’s going to be more to school than “work, work, work,” and “quiet, quiet, quiet.” With expert, warmly sympathetic realism, Lewis captures Little Cliff’s hangdog face and body language to perfection; young children having their own qualms about school will readily identify with this reluctant scholar, and so may share his relief at the end as well. It won’t matter that this is set in the rural 50s, a time of lunch buckets and suspenders and brown oxfords. This is some of Lewis’s best work, emotion-laden watercolors capturing an important time and place. There’s something here for older readers to ponder too, in Mama Pearl’s unexplained tears and pride as Little Cliff races off to join his friends in the schoolyard. An affecting sequel to Little Cliff and the Porch People (1999) that was the first to offer some of Taulbert’s characters from his adult memoirs to young readers. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8037-2557-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
A sweet iteration of the “Big Bad Wolf Mellows Out” theme. Here, an old wolf does some soul searching and then learns to like vegetable stew after a half-frozen lamb appears on his doorstep, falls asleep in his arms, then wakes to give him a kiss. “I can’t eat a lamb who needs me! I might get heartburn!” he concludes. Clad in striped leggings and a sleeveless pullover decorated with bands of evergreens, the wolf comes across as anything but dangerous, and the lamb looks like a human child in a fleecy overcoat. No dreams are likely to be disturbed by this book, but hardened members of the Oshkosh set might prefer the more credible predators and sense of threat in John Rocco’s Wolf! Wolf! (March 2007) or Delphine Perrot’s Big Bad Wolf and Me (2006). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-58925-067-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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