BUSY MONDAY MORNING

by Janina Domanska ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

This is the old-time Slavic peasant milieu of the Petershams--with a catchy, chant-along text, an appealing big-and-little aspect, and a modem, mock-serious Domanska twinkle. . . visible here in the twirl of the father's mustaches, the earnestness of his chubby-cheeked son, the clouds that look like flower blossoms. ""On a Monday morning, busy Monday morning,/Father mowed hay, and so did I."" Overleaf, the two now side-by-side: ""We mowed hay together he and I."" And so they go on through the week--raking the hay on Tuesday, drying it on Wednesday, pitching it on Thursday, stacking it on Friday (mountains of crayon squiggles), hauling it on Saturday--until, on Sunday, the cows have their hay, and father and son have a rest. The patterning of the Polish folk song--a music arrangement appears at the close--accords with Domanska's talent for visual theme-and-variations. But the eyeful in this instance, equivalent to the watery element in If All the Seas. . ., is the hay--or rather the waving green spikes that dry and toss and tangle and heap-up (intimations of Jackson Pollock) before the haying is through. One of Domanska's minimal works with much that's her own to offer.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Greenwillow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1985

Categories: CHILDREN'S