WINTER 2001
Written and illustrated by Lena Anderson. R & S Books/FSG. A simple rhyming story translated from Swedish, with watercolors and pencil sketches, printed in large type for younger readers, counts out a procession of animals, including a pig, elephant, and frog, who arrive at Hedgehog's round kitchen table for a tea party. (Ages 2-5)
Written and illustrated by Suse MacDonald. Scholastic. Very attractive counting book for young readers depicting owl's nighttime journey through the countryside around her. Double-page spreads in mixed media and cut-paper collage show the mice, squirrels, prairie dog, and other animals owl sees before dawn. (Ages 3-6)
Written and illustrated by David McPhail. Sunburst/FSG. Pleasant, gentle watercolors accompany a story about a little boy's adventures one rainy day with his sailboat in the biggest puddle he could find. (Ages 3-6)
Written and illustrated by Frank Asch. Gulliver Books/Harcourt. Popular author/illustrator Frank Asch returns with another title for younger readers about the natural world around us. Asch follows in simple watercolors the sun's path from early morning to late at night--peeking through a window, casting shadows, disappearing behind clouds, making a rainbow, being reflected by moonlight. (Ages 3-7)
The Teddy Bears' Picnic
By Jimmy Kennedy. Illustrated by Alexandra
Day. Aladdin. A high-quality, imaginative version of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century
children's nursery rhyme about a procession of teddy bears and
their costume party and picnic. (Ages 3-6)
My Two Grandmothers
By Effin Older. Illustrated by Nancy Hayashi. Harcourt. Lily's
Grammy Lane lives in a farmhouse, rides a tractor, bakes apple
pies, and snowshoes in the winter. Her Bubbe Silver lives in
a big-city highrise apartment, goes to Florida every winter,
and fries pans full of latkes for the Hanukkah parties she hosts.
Lily enjoys both grandmothers' family traditions--but Grammy
Lane and Bubbe Silver themselves have never met. Lily solves
the problem by holding a party for both grandmothers, and starts
a new tradition of her own. Anyone who grew up in an extended
family that included a grandmother, as I did, will appreciate
this story. (Ages 4-7)
By Sarah Stewart. Illustrated by
David Small. Sunburst/FSG. In 1935, Lydia Grace Finch is sent
from her small rural town by her parents to live with her uncle
Jim in a big city (unnamed, but it looks like New York) until
times get better. Lydia Grace's story is told through letters
she sends back to her parents--about her train trip to the city;
the long hours Uncle Jim works at the bakery he owns; the apartment
she and Uncle Jim live in above the store; the sights and sounds
of the bustling, crowded streets; and, above all, Lydia Grace's
passion for gardening. Uncle Jim doesn't seem to have time to
smile at his niece, but Lydia Grace perseveres with her potted
plants and windowboxes, and finds out that Uncle Jim does care
about her.
Although The Gardener paints a somewhat idealized portrait
of people coping with the Great Depression, both its story and
double-page spreads done in ink wash and watercolor, leave a
lasting impression. (Ages 4-8)
Gregory's Shadow
Written and illustrated by Don Freeman. Viking. Gregory Groundhog
and his friend Shadow do everything together, but on February
1, Gregory steps outside his burrow into the snow, and he and
Shadow become separated. Gregory searches all day and into the
night, through the snowstorm, to find Shadow in time for Groundhog
Day.
Don Freeman, the author and illustrator of many Corduroy the
Bear titles, passed away in 1978; the text and artwork for Gregory's
Shadow were recently discovered by his son. Freeman's soft-edged,
freehand drawings possess an individualistic quality found in
few current children's books. Recommended. (Ages 4-7)
The Disappearing Island
By Corinne Demas. Illustrated by Ted Lewin. Simon and Schuster.
For her ninth birthday, Carrie's grandmother takes her by boat
to Billingsgate Island in Cape Cod Bay, an island that has been
eroding for almost a century; it is now uninhabited and covered
by water twice a day. As her grandmother talks, Carrie imagines
the lighthouse keeper, his family, and the small community that
once thrived on the island. Striking, large-format paintings
by Ted Lewin depict summer gardens, a sparkling sea, and empty
stretches of sand dunes and tidal pools. (Ages 5-8)
What Zeesie Saw on Delancey Street
By Elsa Okon Rael. Illustrated by Marjorie Priceman. Aladdin.
On the night of her seventh birthday, Zeesie gets to go to a
grown-up "package-party," where people bid on wrapped
packages of food to benefit a local immigrants' benevolent society,
and Zeesie herself ends up doing a good deed. Marjorie Priceman's
brightly colored, folk-art-style paintings include lots of neighborhood
detail about New York's Lower East Side in the 1930s: pushcart
vendors, the Loews Delancey movie theater, a trip to S. Klein-on-the-Square
department store. (Ages 5-8)
Dr. Pompo's Nose
By Saxton Freymann and Joost Elfers.
Levine/Scholastic. This author/illustrator team will be familiar
to many readers of all ages for their best-selling Play With
Your Food and related titles featuring fruits and vegetables
cut into imaginative and hilarious shapes. Dr. Pompo's Nose
continues in the same vein: a rhyming story with an all-pumpkin
cast narrates the mystery of a missing pumpkin stem and the eventual
location of its rightful owner. I was helpless with laughter
the first time I saw the cover photo of Dr. Pompo, and the book
ends with some good advice, too: "No matter what the problem,
it often is the case/that the answer is as simple as the nose
upon your face." (Ages 6-adult)
By Lynea Bowdish. Illustrated by Nancy Carpenter. FSG. This spare novel tells the story of nine-year-old Sam's move with his widowed mother--Sam's father died in World War II--from West Virginia to Sam's grandfather's home in Brooklyn, New York, where his mother grew up. Sam, his mother, and his grandfather share a cramped apartment on a noisy Brooklyn block. Sam has trouble adjusting to the pace of city life, and his grandfather doesn't seem to want him there. Eventually, Sam makes many friends in the neighborhood, and he and his grandfather "Bugsy" form a warm relationship as Sam learns to see some things through his grandfather's eyes. (Ages 7-11)
By Betty Traylor. Dell Yearling. Another well-written historical novel about the crumbling of segregation, this one set in Cotton Patch, Arkansas, in 1958, where eleven-year-old Preston Davis has been sent to live with his eccentric great-aunt Eugenia, after his remarried father doesn't want the responsibility of caring for him. During the long, slow summer and the following school year, Preston makes both black and white friends and becomes impatient himself with stereotyping people into categories. Betty Traylor does a good job depicting a somewhat insular 1950s small-town environment where no one, regardless of race, has very much money. (Ages 8-12)
Walking to the Bus-Rider Blues
By Harriette Gillem Robinet. Atheneum.
The setting for this excellent historical novel with two mystery
subplots is hot, dusty, slow-moving Montgomery, Alabama, in June
1956. Twelve-year-old Alfa Merryfield and his fifteen-year-old
sister Zinnia, an aspiring teacher, live with their great-grandmother,
Mama Merryfield, who still cleans houses for a living at the
age of nearly ninety. All three of them, like everyone else in
their community, are boycotting the city buses until they can
enter through the front door and sit where they wish on the bus.
On top of this, someone is stealing the family's rent money from
its hiding place, and Alfa himself--mature beyond his years,
he wants to become a doctor--is accused of a crime that he didn't
commit. Alfa and Zinnia put their heads together to solve both
of these problems.
Many of the historical novels for young people that I receive
are virtually unreadable, with a stiff instructional tone and
wooden characters, and I can't include them in Bradley Beach
Books. Walking to the Bus-Rider Blues is carefully researched,
skillfully and subtly dramatized, and quietly humorous. Recommended.
(Ages 8-12)
By Robert Cormier. Dell Laurel-Leaf. This spare, somber paperback reissue of a historical novel by the late Robert Cormier is set in the gritty, working-class, World War II-era town of Monument, Massachusetts, near where twelve-year-old Darcy Webster's father has been assigned by the army before being sent to Europe to fight. Darcy's parents, peripatetic, independent-minded Unitarians, have never lived in a French-Canadian Catholic enclave like this before, where Darcy and Kathleen Mary O'Hara quickly become best friends. Darcy is drawn to Kathleen Mary's daring adventurousness, her mystical bent, and tales of angels and saints--but against the backdrop of world war, Darcy's father is listed as missing in action and the O'Hara family suddenly disappears. (Ages 10-14)
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