This collection is intelligently translated by a Dane whose grandfather once saw Andersen in the street. Throughout, Andersen's pixie-ish sense of humor remains intact. But while Blegvad's (The Three Little Pigs, 1980, etc.) highly detailed illustrations are deft, they are too small, and too cartoon-like, to fully complement the passionate Andersen. When the tin soldier is thrown in the oven (unsure whether the heat is ``caused by the fire or by love'') and realizes that he is melting but holds himself erect because the little dancer is watching—one of the world's great love stories is coming to a ten-hankie end. But in the tiny illustration our hero is just a blurry figure surrounded by sketchy flames. The whimsical pictures do well by the more humorous fables, such as ``What Father Does is Always Right.'' But Andersen, like his soldier, was not a man who ``wept tin.'' The match girl who longs for her grandmother, the fir tree who longs for glory, the tin soldier and the little dancer who long for each other—all return to the home they love only to die, and die young. Andersen's greatest stories were tragedies. They were written to haunt us and undoubtedly, one way or another, they always will. (Folklore. 8-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-689-50584-1
Page Count: 96
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
An inspirational exploration of caring among parent, teacher and child—one of Grimes’ best. (Poetry. 8-12)
In this delightfully spare narrative in verse, Coretta Scott King Award–winning Grimes examines a marriage’s end from the perspective of a child.
Set mostly in the wake of her father’s departure, only-child Gabby reveals with moving clarity in these short first-person poems the hardship she faces relocating with her mother and negotiating the further loss of a good friend while trying to adjust to a new school. Gabby has always been something of a dreamer, but when she begins study in her new class, she finds her thoughts straying even more. She admits: “Some words / sit still on the page / holding a story steady. / … / But other words have wings / that wake my daydreams. / They … / tickle my imagination, / and carry my thoughts away.” To illustrate Gabby’s inner wanderings, Grimes’ narrative breaks from the present into episodic bursts of vivid poetic reminiscence. Luckily, Gabby’s new teacher recognizes this inability to focus to be a coping mechanism and devises a daily activity designed to harness daydreaming’s creativity with a remarkably positive result for both Gabby and the entire class. Throughout this finely wrought narrative, Grimes’ free verse is tight, with perfect breaks of line and effortless shifts from reality to dream states and back.
An inspirational exploration of caring among parent, teacher and child—one of Grimes’ best. (Poetry. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59078-985-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Wordsong/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
Yasmin’s campaign should help inspire young readers to believe in their own potential to make a difference and teach the...
When her source of books is threatened, so is 9-year-old Yasmin’s goal of reading a book a day “forever.”
The inspiration behind and assistant to her in that goal is Book Uncle, owner of a free lending library on the street corner where she lives. His motto is to provide the “right book for the right person for the right day.” When Book Uncle is forced to shut down his lending library because he can’t afford the permit, Yasmin is disappointed and confused. She is then motivated to try and get the lending library back in business and enlists the help of her friends and then their larger neighborhood. All this happens amid a mayoral election, which provides the perfect background for the plot. Yasmin is a precocious, inquisitive protagonist with a tendency to speak before she thinks. Her relationships with her family and friends read as authentic and loving, even, and perhaps especially, in the moments when they are not perfect. This all lays the foundation for the community organizing that later becomes so necessary in effecting the change that Yasmin seeks to make. Swaney’s playful, childlike illustrations advance the action and help to bring Yasmin’s Indian city to life.
Yasmin’s campaign should help inspire young readers to believe in their own potential to make a difference and teach the valuable lesson that sometimes it takes several small actions to make big moves. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-55498-808-2
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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