A dozen nature craft projects are displayed in vivid, color photographs, as the author/photographer of Hooray for Pre-K (2000) here explores finding and making colors from nature. Introducing each color, she attempts to explain where it is found, its function in nature, and how it affects us. For example, “Red is an attention getting color . . . Red flowers, berries, and fruits seem to say, ‘Look at me!’ ” She explains that the red apple or other fruit is eaten by animals who carry its seeds away to grow more trees. This explanation is somewhat limited, as it does not explain why some birds, beetles, and frogs are red. Surely not to encourage others to eat them! She notes that the color red is associated with emergencies, love, and anger. Following the introduction, she shows two crafts using red pigment: “berry smudges” (painting with red berries), and making potato-print wrapping paper with red dye made from cabbage leaves. She gives a list of materials, step-by-step directions, a warning when adult assistance is needed, and provides several photographs of young children creating projects. She also includes directions for making dyes from natural materials using heat, soaking, or “straight” methods. She offers a slim history of color used in dyeing faces and fabrics and more about the science of color, concluding with a brief bibliography. Though children will enjoy the striking full-color photographs of plants in nature, the text and project directions are more appropriate for a parent or teacher than the young crafters shown in the photos. Where additional craft titles are wanted, this is an attractive supplemental purchase. (Nonfiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-525-46139-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Simple, bella, un regalo permenente: simple and beautiful, a gift that will stay.
Renowned Latin American writer Alvarez has created another story about cultural identity, but this time the primary character is 11-year-old Miguel Guzmán.
When Tía Lola arrives to help the family, Miguel and his hermana, Juanita, have just moved from New York City to Vermont with their recently divorced mother. The last thing Miguel wants, as he's trying to fit into a predominantly white community, is a flamboyant aunt who doesn't speak a word of English. Tía Lola, however, knows a language that defies words; she quickly charms and befriends all the neighbors. She can also cook exotic food, dance (anywhere, anytime), plan fun parties, and tell enchanting stories. Eventually, Tía Lola and the children swap English and Spanish ejercicios, but the true lesson is "mutual understanding." Peppered with Spanish words and phrases, Alvarez makes the reader as much a part of the "language" lessons as the characters. This story seamlessly weaves two culturaswhile letting each remain intact, just as Miguel is learning to do with his own life. Like all good stories, this one incorporates a lesson just subtle enough that readers will forget they're being taught, but in the end will understand themselves, and others, a little better, regardless of la lengua nativa—the mother tongue.
Simple, bella, un regalo permenente: simple and beautiful, a gift that will stay. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-80215-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In 1948 the unorthodox Miss Agnes arrives to teach the children of an Athabascan Indian Village in remote Alaska. Ten-year-old Fred (Fredrika) matter-of-factly narrates this story of how a teacher transformed the school. Miss Agnes’s one-room schoolhouse is a progressive classroom, where the old textbooks are stored away first thing upon her arrival. The children learn to read using handmade books that are about their own village and lives: winter trapping camps, tanning moose hides, fishing, and curing the catch, etc. Math is a lesson on how not to get cheated when selling animal pelts. These young geographers learn about the world on a huge map that covers one whole schoolhouse wall. Fred is pitch-perfect in her observations of the village residents. “Little Pete made a picture of his dad’s trapline cabin . . . He was proud of that picture, I could tell, because he kept making fun of it.” Hill (Winter Camp, 1993, etc.) creates a community of realistically unique adults and children that is rich in the detail of their daily lives. Big Pete is as small and scrappy, as his son Little Pete is huge, gentle, and kind. Fred’s 12-year-old deaf sister, Bokko, has her father’s smile and has never gone to school until Miss Agnes. Charlie-Boy is so physically adept at age 6 that he is the best runner, thrower, and catcher of all the children. These are just a few of the residents in this rural community. The school year is not without tension. Will Bokko continue in school? Will Mama stay angry with Miss Agnes? And most important, who will be their teacher after Miss Agnes leaves? A quiet, yet satisfying account. (Fiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-689-82933-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2000
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