Inspired by a passage from Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, Esbaum captures the bustle and commotion attending a steam packet’s arrival in a small river town: “Rubberneckers, / pounding boots, / whiskered geezers, big galoots. / Wheels a-clatter, / choking cloud, / yapping dog, excited crowd.” Focusing on animated faces and burly figures, Rex depicts the hubbub with Norman Rockwell-esque realism, adding the occasional inset close-up. With the title repeated in page-filling, 19th century–style display type for a chorus, this makes a rhythmic, emphatic evocation of a scene from days gone by, its visual volume akin to Judith Heide Gilliland’s exuberant Steamboat! The Story of Captain Blanche Leathers (2000), illus by Holly Meade, though its content is closer to William Anderson’s comparatively restrained River Boy (2003), illus by Dan Andreasen. (afterword, map) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 8, 2005
ISBN: 0-374-37236-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2005
To commemorate well-documented old sightings of huge sea serpents gamboling off the New England coast, Ibatoulline paints richly detailed scenes of wide seas and narrow shores, of small boats, monstrous writhing coils and astonished onlookers—to which Anderson pairs an old man’s reminiscence in verse: “The serpent was twirling, just chasing its tail, / And showed all intention of staying. / ‘Is it back in the deep?’ ‘Is it eating our sheep?’ / ‘I think,’ I said, ‘that the serpent is playing.’ ” Young monster lovers will share the wonder of this never-solved mystery, and applaud when a company of sea-hunter’s strenuous efforts to kill the monster yield only a large mackerel. A 19th-century tale presented in grand, 19th-century style. (afterword) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7636-2038-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Adler (also with Widener, Lou Gehrig, 1997, etc.) sets his fictional story during the week of July 14, 1932, in the Bronx, when the news items that figure in this tale happened. A boy gets a dime for his birthday, instead of the bicycle he longs for, because it is the Great Depression, and everyone who lives in his neighborhood is poor. While helping his friend Jacob sell newspapers, he discovers that his own father, who leaves the house with a briefcase each day, is selling apples on Webster Avenue along with the other unemployed folk. Jacob takes the narrator to Yankee Stadium with the papers, and people don’t want to hear about the Coney Island fire or the boy who stole so he could get something to eat in jail. They want to hear about Babe Ruth and his 25th homer. As days pass, the narrator keeps selling papers, until the astonishing day when Ruth himself buys a paper from the boy with a five-dollar bill and tells him to keep the change. The acrylic paintings bask in the glow of a storied time, where even row houses and the elevated train have a warm, solid presence. The stadium and Webster Avenue are monuments of memory rather than reality in a style that echoes Thomas Hart Benton’s strong color and exaggerated figures. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201378-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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