A family’s love and devotion to each other and to the game of baseball, depicted lovingly.
At a time when local baseball was part of the American landscape, one family fielded its own team.
The Acerra family numbered 16 children, 12 of whom were brothers who all loved to play baseball. The boys played in high school and later formed their own semi-pro team. They played wherever they could get a good game and were known as highly skilled players and crowd pleasers. They shared a special closeness and loyalty, joking and teasing, but always looking out for one another. That loyalty extended to a love of country as six of them fought in World War II, which was the first time they had been separated. After the war they continued to play in local leagues, with younger brothers taking over when big brothers aged out. In 1997 they were recognized by the Baseball Hall of Fame as the all-time longest playing all-brother team. Employing descriptive, conversational language in a matter-of-fact tone that doesn’t sentimentalize, Vernick tells of a remarkable family, part of what has come to be known as "the greatest generation." Salerno’s lively drawings, rendered in black crayon, gouache, watercolor and pastel with digital color added, complement the action, striking a balance between detail and expansiveness.
A family’s love and devotion to each other and to the game of baseball, depicted lovingly. (author’s note; artist’s note) (Picture book/biography. 5-10)Pub Date: April 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-38557-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012
Roth (My Love for You, 1996, etc.) honors the memory of her Chinese uncle through her story, which is partially based on her uncle's immigrant experiences and his talents as a poet and calligrapher. Mr. Kang celebrates his 70th birthday by announcing he will retire after 50 years as a cook in a Chinese restaurant. He wants to read the New York Times every day, paint poems in Chinese calligraphy, and keep a special kind of Chinese bird, a hua mei, in a cage that he can take to the park like the other retired Chinese men in his neighborhood in Brooklyn. Mr. Kang's seven-year-old grandson, Sam, objects to keeping a bird caged, but when the bird is given the chance to go free, it returns to Mr. Kang's apartment and its cage. This lovely, quiet story has a satisfying conclusion as Mr. Kang paints a poem, Sam paints a picture, and the bird paints a little picture of its own with delicate footprints. Roth's elegant collage illustrations are a delight to peruse, incorporating paper-cut figures, rice papers, brocades, feathers, newspaper scraps, and photographs to create a dynamic flow of art. Text is place carefully within its own frame on top of one side of each exquisitely crafted two-page spread. An author's note offers more details about the Chinese tradition of retired men keeping caged birds as pets as well as details about her collage materials. For its art, for its celebration of a venerable grandfather, and for a special look at a unique custom, this is a story to be treasured. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7922-7723-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
The strain of trying to cover too much territory shows in this patchwork import.
A two-part home-garden manual for British and like climes, with a thin fictive overlay on the first half.
Young Billy recounts the pleasures of working with his grandpa in a “vegetable patch at the garden’s end” from late winter through fall. His gee-whiz narration often waxes pedantic: “I spy slimy slugs and snails. Caterpillars too! And I see aphids and blackflies, feasting on young, frail leaves.” Once the patch is put to sleep, Fry drops the perfunctory plot completely and goes on to recap, season by season, general gardening agendas for adults and for children on facing pages. In Moxley’s similarly stiff art, generic figures with, generally, fixed expressions pose amid sharply regimented rows of growing but thinly planted veggies. (Despite several references to flowers there are none to be seen, except for a spindly row of daffodils.) Aside from not using mulch, Grandpa gardens organically. Readers may well find themselves confused. Not only does the garden in the first part not match the suggested plan in the second, the author mentions crops that Grandpa doesn’t happen to grow, like raspberries and sweetcorn. Furthermore, the instructions to plant broad beans in the fall (only possible where winters are mild, and for a fall crop, which she doesn’t mention) and to check for hedgehogs before lighting bonfires aren’t the only ones not suitable for most North American gardens.
The strain of trying to cover too much territory shows in this patchwork import. (Instructional picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-84686-053-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2012
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