Kay and McCurdy create a wonder-working setting for their book on the story behind the first transcontinental rail line. Words and image are of equal dramatic value, with McCurdy using his signature scratchboard illustrations washed in color, and Kay picking and choosing her words with such care that every one of them sparkles. The story of the building of the railroad long ago entered the national mythology, so has the stature to wear well this handsome literary coat. As in Gold Fever (1998), Kay provides a verse for every page, bone-clean couplets that drive the story forward: “Survey parties,/Canvas tents./Levels, transits—/Measurements.” The blasting of the tunnels is called forth, the erecting of trestles, the Irish and the Chinese, and “Black clouds scuttle,/Billow high./Lightning crackles,/Splitting sky.” Railroad barons and politicians lurk in the background, not necessarily sinister, but certainly not as beguiling as the people laying the rails. An author’s note makes clear the momentousness of the joining of the lines, which has the ring of a miracle even to modern readers: Crossing the continent went from a journey of six months to a trip of six days. (map) (Picture book. 4-9)
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-399-23119-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
cannoli cream off your fingers. (Picture book. 5-8)
Transporting us back to a time when cars had fins, eyeglasses had points, and women wore high heels to go shopping,
Cocca-Leffler (Mr. Tanen’s Ties, 1998) has crafted a perfectly simple and engaging story out of a day spent shopping. The narrator lives on a street that’s on the bus route to the big city of Boston, and all the neighborhood kids get to know Bill the bus driver. One Saturday, Mom and her two daughters take Bill’s bus to Filene’s Basement, where they hunt for bargains and cap the day with ice cream. Another Saturday, Bill takes them to the Italian North End, where they visit the butcher and the baker and vegetable stands, ending with delicious cannoli, which they eat on the bus ride home. The last cannoli always goes to Bill, who calls the trio his "cannoli girls." The acrylic-on-gesso illustrations fill the pages to their edges with cheerful cityscapes, figures, and architecture alike, rendered in bright, affectionate hues. Warm, winning, and as satisfying as licking
cannoli cream off your fingers. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-56397-723-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
Newcomer Santoro’s story of the ice cream truck that pined for a more important role in life suffers from a premise that’s well-worn and still fraying—the person or object that longs to be something “more” in life, only to find out that his or its lot in life is enough, after all. Isaac the ice cream truck envies all the bigger, larger, more important vehicles he encounters (the big wheels are depicted as a rude lot, sullen, surly, and snarling, hardly a group to excite much envy) in a day, most of all the fire trucks and their worthy occupants. When Isaac gets that predictable boost to his self-image—he serves up ice cream to over-heated firefighters after a big blaze—it comes as an unmistakable putdown to the picture-book audience: the children who cherished Isaac—“They would gather around him, laughing and happy”—weren’t reason enough for him to be contented. Santoro equips the tale with a tune of Isaac’s very own, and retro scenes in tropical-hued colored pencil that deftly convey the speed of the trucks with skating, skewed angles. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-5296-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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