A fine picture book from Hathorn and Andrews: The text, a poem, is provoking and challenging, with a pulsing lyric understatement, while the superb artwork is composed of a collage of fabric snips painted in subtly harmonious, unctuous color. A mother and her two daughters are slaves on a plantation. The action involves the cobbling together from cloth fragments a wedding dress for the older daughter, Sissy (“A scrap of net, outrageous, light/Round Sissy’s neck, this flimsy tie./Susannah laughs at the very sight,/Her sister looks so pleased, so shy”), who is to be married to John Bee, a free man. They gather almost all that they need, but for the back panel, which miraculously appears when the lady from the Big House wants a sheet cut up for dusters. The dress completed, the mother presides at the wedding (a preacher has been disallowed by the missus, which, as if the dress were not enough, will give young readers a taste of a slave’s life), and while there is great happiness, the couple must part: John returns to his work to earn money toward buying Sissy’s freedom. The dress is taken apart, returned to dusters, but that it was made at all is nothing short of inspirational. When Sissy finally leaves, the sadness of her mother and Susannah is tempered by the thought of a new dress, a waiting dress, for Sissy’s child, to be born free. Through it all runs Susannah’s sky blue sash, a simple but talismanic scarf, a vehicle to express love, generosity, remembrance, and the tie that binds. (Picture book/poetry. 5-9)
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81090-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1998
An inspiring story of young boy's compelling desire to read. As a boy of nine, Booker works in a salt mine from the dark of early morning to the gloom of night, hungry for a meal, but even hungrier to learn to read. Readers follow him on his quest in Malden, Virginia, where he finds inspiration in a man ``brown as me'' reading a newspaper on a street corner. An alphabet book helps, but Booker can't make the connection to words. Seeking out ``that brown face of hope'' once again, Booker gains a sense of the sounds represented by letters, and these become his deliverance. Bradby's fine first book is tautly written, with a poetic, spiritual quality in every line. The beautifully executed, luminous illustrations capture the atmosphere of an African-American community post-slavery: the drudgery of days consumed by back- breaking labor, the texture of private lives conducted by lantern- light. There is no other context or historical note about Booker T. Washington's life, leaving readers to piece together his identity. Regardless, this is an immensely satisfying, accomplished work, resonating first with longing and then with joy. (Picture book. 5- 8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-531-09464-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle (1965) upgrades to The Mice and the Rolls-Royce.
In Windsor Castle there sits a “dollhouse like no other,” replete with working plumbing, electricity, and even a full library of real, tiny books. Called Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, it also plays host to the Whiskers family, a clan of mice that has maintained the house for generations. Henry Whiskers and his cousin Jeremy get up to the usual high jinks young mice get up to, but when Henry’s little sister Isabel goes missing at the same time that the humans decide to clean the house up, the usually bookish big brother goes on the adventure of his life. Now Henry is driving cars, avoiding cats, escaping rats, and all before the upcoming mouse Masquerade. Like an extended version of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904), Priebe keeps this short chapter book constantly moving, with Duncan’s peppy art a cute capper. Oddly, the dollhouse itself plays only the smallest of roles in this story, and no factual information on the real Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House is included at the tale’s end (an opportunity lost).
Innocuous adventuring on the smallest of scales. (Fantasy. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6575-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
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