THE SUNDAY OUTING
by Gloria Jean Pinkney & illustrated by Jerry Pinkney
In Back Home (1992), Ernestine visited an aunt and uncle down South; this book explains how that journey came to happen.
Ernestine loves to go to the North Philadelphia station with her great-aunt to see the North Carolina train. One Sunday, she and Aunt Odessa discuss Ernestine's wish to take the train to the farm. Tickets are expensive, and Mama and Daddy are saving to buy a house; but Aunt Odessa suggests bargaining with them by finding ways to save money. Later, when Ernestine volunteers to forego new school clothes, her parents decide that they, too, can postpone some important purchases to make her trip possible; the story ends as the child sets off on the train. The author captures the family's warm solidarity in a likable narrative that has a good number of casually mentioned period details. Jerry Pinkney's splendid watercolors, too, richly evoke the early 1950s, with main characters springing to life in glowing color against more muted and impressionistic backgrounds painted with extraordinary delicacy and skill.
A welcome companion to Back Home. (Picture book. 5-9)