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Booklist Review
Ages 5^-8. Holocaust survivor Morris Kaplan spends his days tending his flower shop and trying to ignore his emotional emptiness. Two of his youngest customers, Jonathan and Ilana, visit every Friday to buy flowers for their family's Sabbath. He is surprised when the children arrive on a Tuesday, until they explain that this bouquet is for the first night of Hanukkah. After Mr. Kaplan admits that he no longer observes holiday traditions, the children invite him to join their family festivities the following evening. Although the celebration brings forth painful memories--including one of a single daffodil growing in the mud at Auschwitz--the experience helps Morris begin reconnecting with humanity. Bloom's rich acrylic paintings lend an appropriately thoughtful tone to the pensive text. The story is only marginally connected with Hanukkah, but it lends itself to sharing on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Pair with Feder's The Feather-Bed Journey [BKL O 15 95] for another perspective. --Kay Weisman
Horn Book Review
Illustrated by Barry Moser. When the midway comes to town, young Drew is openly skeptical about the magic and mystery surrounding it. As often happens, though, the skeptic turns into the most devout believer. Drew becomes mesmerized by Bingleman and the illusions he creates. That evening Drew runs away to join the troupe. Surprisingly, his father anticipates the move and comes to claim Drew before the midway leaves, reprising the action of his own father years before. The book is perfectly illustrated with Moser's boldly dramatic scenes of the midway in action and the calmer reality of everyday life. A charming recapitulation of a simpler, safer, and more innocent world in our not-so-distant past. e.s.w. David A. Adler One Yellow Daffodil: A Hanukkah Story Illustrated by Lloyd Bloom. Morris Kaplan, a kind but lonely flower shop owner, looks forward to the Friday visits of a young brother and sister who come every week to buy flowers for the Sabbath. One Friday, they come asking for old flowers because they have only two dollars, but Morris arranges a large bouquet of his finest flowers, telling the children gently, "When you buy old flowers, you get more." When the routine is changed by the youngsters' coming on a Tuesday to buy flowers for Hanukkah, their visit stirs bittersweet memories of Morris's family in Poland celebrating Hanukkah years before. The next day, the children arrive at the shop with an invitation from their parents for Mr. Kaplan to come that night to celebrate Hanukkah with them. Despite his protestations that he no longer observes the holiday, the welcoming warmth of the evening with the young family and their traditions affects Morris greatly. Returning home, he takes an old menorah from a long-unopened box and cries as he remembers the last time it was used before he and his family were taken to Auschwitz. The following day, he brings his newly polished menorah to the children's home, where he shares the story of his Holocaust experiences and of the single yellow daffodil that gave him hope for survival. Morris then stands with his new friends to say the blessings and light his Hanukkah candles. The deep-toned acrylic paintings, in which the flowers shine out of the surrounding darkness like a ray of hope, emphasize the poignancy of the story. h.b.z. Lisa Campbell Ernst, Author-Illustrator The Letters Are Lost! Alphabet blocks star in a series of delightfully constructed adventures as Ernst turns a hand, deft and practiced in storymaking, to playful use of the ABC scheme. "Long ago the letters were all together, neat and tidy" in a green wooden box on red wheels. On successive pages, each block is set in the lower corner of a framed vignette. Sturdy, simple drawings follow the adventures of the lost blocks in the yard, in the playroom, and around the house. "A flew high in an Airplane . . . D was a Dog's tasty toy." The wide-eyed dog, a cat, and several toys reappear from time to time, lending a sense of continuity and place to the series of small dramas. The presence of a child is often conveyed through a hand reaching for a spilled ice-cream cone, squishing the toothpaste, or creating a valentine. A full palette of strong colors fills in the humorous line drawings. The energetic scenes are simple and absorbing, with well-chosen bits of detail expanding the alphabetic content: at "P dove into the Popcorn," a tiny toy pig peers over the rim of the bowl. The whole scheme, with the old-fashioned blocks and toys, is a quite traditional alphabet book beautifully rendered. A final invitation prompting children to create their own adventures with the reassembled blocks has creative appeal for readers of all ages. m.a.b. H Amy Hest In the Rain with Baby Duck Illustrated by Jill Barton. A despondent Baby Duck stares out the window at the rainy downpour that stands between her and "Pancake Sunday" with Grampa on the other side of town. The visits are a family tradition, and since she loves both pancakes and Grampa, Baby Duck reluctantly follows her parents out into the rain. Mr. and Mrs. Duck bounce happily through the puddles, urging Baby Duck to step lively. But Baby plods along muttering about her wet face and wet feet and sings a sad little song. While Mr. and Mrs. Duck skip and waddle and shimmy, Baby dawdles and dallies and drags behind. When they get to Grampa's house, he sizes up the situation instantly, kissing Baby's wet cheek and commiserating with her. Taking Baby to the attic, Grampa unearths a tall green bag containing a beautiful red bunny umbrella and matching red boots. He reveals that when Baby's mother was little, she didn't like the rain either. Delighted, Baby Duck returns to her parents, and after pancakes, she and Grampa go walking in the rain. This time, as they waddle and shimmy and hop in all the puddles, she sings a happy song about her umbrella and boots, ending with, "I really love this rainy day." Preschoolers will love the large, bright pages with the funny pencil and watercolor illustrations of the duck family, and they will readily identify with the joy of splashing in puddles (with boots on). h.b.z. Kathryn Lasky The Gates of the Wind Illustrated by Janet Stevens. Plucky, tough Gamma Lee decides to leave her comfortable village and safe home in the valley to go exploring at the top of the mountains and find "the place her great-grandmother had told her about years earlier" - the Gates of the Wind. In the ensuing tug of war between the old woman and the contrary, powerful wind that whips around the mountain top, Gamma Lee learns to survive and flourish by adapting to her new surroundings. When the wind turns the wooden house she has built to matchsticks, Gamma Lee looks closely at the things that grow successfully on the mountain and builds herself a home of supple reeds that permits the wind to sing "a thin song through the walls." Learning to plant root vegetables and mountain wildflowers, she chuckles as the wind blows gently through the blossoms and says, "You're back. . . . I missed you." Meanwhile, in the village, the stories told about Gamma Lee inspire a young girl to want to go exploring someday beyond the Gates of the Wind. Stevens's windblown illustrations capture the humor and excitement of this story about a most unusual heroine. h.b.z. Margie Palatini Piggie Pie! Illustrated by Howard Fine. Gritch the Witch, on reviewing the recipes in her Old Hag Cookbook one morning, rejects many enticing choices such as mashed dragon-tongue pudding and boiled black buzzard feet. What she really wants for lunch is something truly delicious: piggie pie. The main ingredient - eight plump piggies - poses a problem, however. After consulting the yellow pages, she puts her broomstick in gear and heads for Old MacDonald's farm. Fortunately, those resourceful piggies see her coming and devise a camouflage plan. Every animal she consults - the ducks, for example, very ingeniously masked and sporting unusually curly tails - have a formula answer for her. "The duck quack-quacked here. It quack-quacked there. Here it quacked. There it quacked. Everywhere it quack-quacked, 'No piggies.'" All the animals - cows, chickens, and even a remarkably piglike Old MacDonald - give the same answer: no piggies. Totally outflanked, Gritch makes plans for lunch with a wolf who has also been having troubles with piggies, and off they go, arm in arm, clearly with designs on each other. Gritch's long green fingernails, warty face, and high-powered language - "What do you mean, no piggies, you feathered drumstick?" - make her a memorable witchy character, and though the bold, forceful, in-your-face illustrations are at times a bit overwhelming, there's no denying that they're effective and absolutely suited to the story. Extremely amusing and certain to be appreciated by young listeners of the more robust sort. a.a.f. Candice F. Ransom When the Whippoorwill Calls Illustrated by Kimberly Bulcken Root. This wistful, nostalgic tale tells of the losses suffered and the gains achieved by the creation of the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. The hollows of the Blue Ridge Mountains were lived in by hard-working tenant farmers, poor in money but wealthy in the beauty that surrounded them. Polly and her parents tend cattle, make white oak baskets and huckleberry jam to sell in the general store, and enjoy the call of the whippoorwill and the golden light on the mountain peaks. When they learn that their land has been sold and they will have to move to a house furnished by the government, "down below in the flatlands," they can hardly believe it. Sadly, they leave, but they find their new house is nice, too, "with inside taps and electric lights." They all miss their mountain life, especially Pap, and one day Pap and Polly walk back to the old cabin on the mountain. They find their home still standing and gather "merkles" - special mushrooms that grow only in abandoned orchards. Pap tells Polly, "Sometimes change is good." The homely, understated text and illustrations contrast Mama's happiness in the new amenities, after her grinding hard work in the mountains, with Pap's homesick yearnings for the old ways. A thoughtful and sensitive view of change, good and bad. The author's note describes the founding of the Shenandoah National Park and states, "The Blue Ridge Mountains are wild and beautiful again." a.a.f. Chris Raschka, Author-Illustrator Can't Sleep If Margaret Wise Brown's Good Night Moon (Harper) has become a standard nursery classic for most of the twentieth century, Chris Raschka's Can't Sleep may well set a new standard for the twenty-first. With a minimum of detail but supercharged with emotion, text and pictures express the feelings of a small dog - a surrogate child - as it listens to the sounds of its family retiring one by one, leaving it to face the night with only the moon for comfort and protection. Universal in its conversational tone, the text reassuringly observes that "The moon can tell / you feel frightened / and are lonely. / The moon will stay / awake for you." In a brilliantly imaginative and completely childlike conclusion, the reader is reminded that when dawn comes and the moon must sleep, "Now you may stay awake / and keep her safe." The assertive lines of the cartoon-style watercolors match the tone of the text without overwhelming it. The whole is a triumphant melding of content, concept, and execution. m.m.b. Alice Schertle Down the Road Illustrated by E. B. Lewis. Schertle's unique story combines the ancient themes of temptation and redemption with a modern lesson in supportive parenting techniques. When Hetty is trusted for the first time to walk alone down the dusty road to Mr. Birdie's general store for a dozen eggs, she is as careful as can be - checking her pockets to be sure she still has her money, practicing a smooth walk, and remembering to thank Mr. Birdie for the "twelve big beauties" with "no cracks." But on the way home she is tempted by the sight of a tree full of juicy apples - "just three, thought Hetty, and then I'll go straight home" - and accidentally breaks all dozen eggs. Ashamed, Hetty climbs the apple tree, unwilling to go home. When her parents find her, they give Hetty not the expected scolding but love and understanding, joining her in the tree. "'I'd almost forgotten how lovely the world looks from a tree,' Mama said. 'Everyone should spend some time in an apple tree,' Papa agreed." They all return home with pockets and basket filled with apples, and instead of eggs for breakfast the next morning, they have apple pie. Lewis's sumptuous, light-filled watercolors capture Hetty's rural summer world, her expressions of determination and despair, and the closeness of her African-American family. m.v.p. H Rosemary Wells, Reteller Lassie Come-Home Illustrated by Susan Jeffers. Now a classic, Eric Knight's Lassie Come-Home - the saga of the loyal collie who surmounts incredible odds in a year-long trek from Scotland to Yorkshire in order to return to her original owner - first appeared as a short story in The Saturday Evening Post in 1938. Originally, Lassie was more than a dog story; it was also about love, about the tyranny of poverty, and about the power of money to control the lives of others. By returning to the essential elements of character and theme, Rosemary Wells has revitalized the narrative as one might revivify a folk legend. The text has the economy of a well-honed play script and is well matched with Susan Jeffers's handsome full-color illustrations. No one can capture a mountainous landscape better than Jeffers, as she demonstrated in The Three Jovial Huntsmen (Macmillan). Thus, a brilliantly composed double-page spread of Lassie standing at the edge of one of the great Scottish lochs suggests not only the wild beauty of the landscape but also the formidable impediments to the success of her journey. The retelling more closely approximates the original short story; in the novel, the motivations of the various characters Lassie encounters were expanded, and lengthy descriptions of scenery were added, which Jeffers's visual interpretations make unnecessary. With a full-page map of Lassie's journey. m.m.b. Ed Young, Author-Illustrator Night Visitors Ho Kuan, a young scholar, is distressed when his father gives orders to kill the ants that have been getting into the family's storehouse and eating the grain. Yielding to his son's pleas, the father gives him one month to find an alternative. That night, Ho Kuan is visited by soldiers in black armor who have come to take him to their king's palace. There, he is welcomed by all and given the king's daughter in marriage. When the kingdom is invaded by soldiers in red armor, Ho leads the army to drive out the invaders. After the death of his wife in the war, Ho decides to return to his parents' home. The grateful king tells him he will find a reward in his own garden. Waking to find himself at his own desk, Ho realizes he has been dreaming; then, seeing a line of black ants crossing his papers, he follows them out to the garden. There he finds a buried treasure that enables him to seal his father's storehouse and save the ants. Haunting, subtle paintings illustrate the gentle Chinese folktale that teaches respect for all life. h.b.z. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Book Review
A very slow description, in a melancholy present tense, of the ordinary days of a kind old man named Morris Kaplan, a Holocaust survivor and now owner of a flower store. One day, Morris's two favorite customers--a boy and a girl--invite him to their home for Hanukkah and make him feel as if he is part of a family again. Later, he brings over his menorah, a remnant from before the war, and tells them his history. It is difficult to estimate the impact of this sentimental story, because it is completely overshadowed by Bloom's magnificent illustrations. The pictures are dark, well- defined acrylics, with light that falls on the foreheads and the cheekbones of the figures, reminiscent of Balthus. The expressions on the characters' faces, the tilt of their heads, the way they hold their hands--it's almost unbearably wistful. (Picture book. 6- 10)
TextPublication details: San Diego : Gulliver Books, c1995.Edition: 1st edDescription: 1 v. (unpaged) : col. ill. ; 29 cmISBN: