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AUNT MINNIE MCGRANAHAN

Name: AUNT MINNIE MCGRANAHAN
Author: Mary Skillings Prigger
ISBN: 0-395-82270-X

by Mary Skillings Prigger ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 22, 1999

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Prigger bases her engaging debut on an incident in her own family. The setting is 1920, so Minnie can’t be considered obsessive-compulsive; instead, she’s a woman with a system for keeping things shipshape and just so. Her farmhouse is trim and neat, as is her garden and barn. Her neighbors snipe that it’s a good thing that Minnie, a spinster, has no children, who would surely interfere with her system. Then the telegram arrives: “Come quick. Your brother and his wife have had an accident. Their children are orphans in need of a home.” Aunt Minnie goes and gathers the children, all nine of them, in a thrice. The neighbors look on with amazement (as will readers) when all the potential for pandemonium is breezily absorbed into Aunt Minnie’s system: “The oldest looked after the youngest. The ones in the middle looked after each other. And Aunt Minnie looked after them all.” Tweak this template a little, and it works for grocery shopping, housework, bathing, and going to the johnny house. There are episodes of stubbornness and fretting, dawdling, pouting, and crying; there is also noise, music, laughter, and hugging, all captured with elemental clarity and a visual caress in Lewin’s watercolors. This story is a sweet and simple song of grace, love, and responsibilities met; it will leave children aglow and adults in tears. (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: March 22, 1999

ISBN: 0-395-82270-X

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Clarion Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999

Categories:

CHILDREN'S FAMILY

- BOOK REVIEW
AUNT MINNIE AND THE TWISTER
by Mary Skillings Prigger & illustrated by Betsy Lewin

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KEVIN AND HIS DAD

by Irene Smalls ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1999

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S FAMILY

- BOOK REVIEW
MY POP POP AND ME
by Irene Smalls & illustrated by Cathy Ann Johnson

- BOOK REVIEW
MY NANA AND ME
by Irene Smalls & illustrated by Cathy Ann Johnson

- BOOK REVIEW
DON’T SAY AIN’T
by Irene Smalls & illustrated by Colin Bootman

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DEAR JUNO

by Soyung Pak ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1999

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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)