When her younger sister contracts polio, a farm girl finds a way to bring wonder and joy back into her life. Anna and her sister Katya have always loved to dance together, pretending to be ballerinas. After five-year-old Katya suffers from polio, her legs remain so weak and crooked she can barely walk with crutches. Anna promises Katya she will dance again, but wonders if Katya will even be able to walk. Anna is hopeful when Mama takes Katya to specialists in Minneapolis. Katya returns home walking, but she must wear heavy metal braces to support her legs. A depressed Katya tells Anna she will never be able to dance in her ugly braces. Anna, however, manages to erase Katya’s sadness and help her dance in her own special way. Lovely realistic watercolors capture the look and feel of early 20th-century Midwestern farm life, as well as the mood and spirit of the two sisters. A warm and inspiring tribute to one sister’s love and the other’s courage. (author and illustrator notes) (Picture book. 6-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-56145-376-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Combining saccharine visuals with a monotonous ditty, this book follows a child from morning wake-up to evening snuggle-down with no fewer than 13 stanzas modeled on “The Farmer in the Dell” and static illustrations in which the young, chubby-cheeked narrator, whose wide eyes are generally looking off to the side, is awkwardly posed’sometimes floating slightly—against generic indoor and outdoor scenes. His mother looks about ten, his father perhaps five years older. The author and illustrator have done much better work in the past; pass this up in favor of Nancy White Carlstrom’s evergreen Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? (1986). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-531-30138-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Best (Last Licks, p. 297, etc.) offers a perfectly delightful celebration of a really great grandmother. In “the early blue of Grandma’s birthday morning,” as her mama wakes her and goes off to work, Sara hears all her neighbors going about their daily routine. Her Russian grandmother, whom Sara calls Catherine the Great, listens to Sara’s poems, comforts the neighbor’s baby by playing the Russian version of patty-cake, and cooks up a storm in preparation for her own birthday. She has mandated that there be “no presents!” but the neighbors and Sara’s mother know what to do; at the borscht-and-blintzes party, Mary Caruso sings Catherine’s favorite song, Mr. Minsky dances with her, one father, a hairdresser, does her hair, and Sara’s mother finds the picture of Catherine coming from Russia on a “big boat with a little suitcase.” Sara’s “no present” is a poem in English and an offer to teach her grandmother more. Joined here is lively language with exuberant pictures, showing, for example, the three floors of Sara’s building in cutaway, or a double-page close-up filled with the food on and company around Sara’s kitchen table. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7894-2622-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: DK Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
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