Inhabiting this tender love story is a gentle giantess who lives in isolation at the edge of the woods so that she won't scare people with her towering height. When a friendly woodsman builds a house nearby, his affection for his reclusive neighbor grows, even after he learns of her true size. He doesn't tell her what he knows, but invites her to the town carnival, letting her know that she'll ``see everything there from elves and fairies to witches and giants.'' The giantess is overjoyed to be mingling with people, and, at the carnival, she is surprised by admirers of her ``costume,'' all of whom point out the benefits of being very tall, and all of whom accept her when she confesses her height. The giantess gains self-esteem, gets her man, and lives happily ever after. This sweet story, translated from the German, will capture the hearts of young romantics. Seelig's timeless art does not play down the heroine's size—she is large among the other carnival attendees, but she is also lovely; the illustrations are perfect in their soft, misty beauty. (Picture book/folklore. 4-7)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-916291-76-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Aimed at readers of Douglas Florian's A Potter (1991) and A Painter (1993), and with just enough detail to hint at etching's challenges and possibilities, Geisert (Roman Numerals: I to MM, 1996, etc.) takes an opportunity to showcase nautical and jungle scenes as well as his more familiar rural views and pigs. A young narrator works with his grandfather in a spacious loft, printing and hand-coloring an array of etchings for a sale. As a book illustrator specializing in this 500-year-old technique, Geisert makes the perfect guide. The furniture and equipment depicted in the full-page and double-page etchings are modeled on his own, and the feelings at several stages of production—from the anxiety of properly timing the printing plate's acid bath to the daydream-inducing tedium of hand- coloring—are unmistakably based on personal experience. A labeled view of the studio precedes a final spread showing each step in an etching's creation. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: April 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-395-79754-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Johnson (The Aunt in Our House, 1996, etc.) has an unnamed African-American girl recall her grandfather's words about the ``rolling store'' (an itinerant peddler's truck) that periodically visited a country crossroads when her grandfather was young. The spare, poetic text describes how this event was an excuse for an all-day social, with people coming from miles around to see, to visit, and to buy; meanwhile, the pictures not only illustrate those bygone days but also show the narrator and friend potting flowers, stringing bead necklaces, baking cookies, and making lemonade to stock their own ``rolling store'' in a little red wagon. The grandfather arrives just in time to hit the streets with the girls and their wagon and to call out the old vendor's song, ``We got it all. The Rolling Store has got it all.'' This is a lovely story of memories being passed on to and re-enacted by a later generation; children will relate to it instantly and grasp the double-layered story in the pictures. Catalanotto's golden pencil-and-watercolor paintings shimmer with the haze of memory and are dappled with summer sunlight and shadow. He closes the circle of the story so seamlessly that the illustrations in the first and last pages of the book clearly echo past and present. (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-531-30015-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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