With contagious wonder and language as broad as the lady herself, Lewis (Good Mousekeeping, p. 743, etc.) adds an outsized new member to the ranks of tall-tale heroines, introducing itinerant cobbler Susannah DeClare: “Strong as a lockbox and as long as a good spit in a windstorm.” As welcome for her news as for her shoes, Susannah worked the small towns of the Ohio Valley years ago, taking orders, then returning months later with finished footwear and updates on births, deaths, and other events she’d gathered along the way. Alas, after many years she met her end making one final pre-Christmas delivery to Chagrin Falls, braving the chill of a hard “Snohio” winter to hang her wares on a tree outside town—a tree that actually exists and is still hung about with shoes. Fancy typeface and layout give the pages an over-designed look, but brawny, gray-haired Susannah towers as convincingly in Sheban’s dusky scenes as in the grand music of Lewis’s words, and fans of Anne Isaacs’s Swamp Angel (1994) will welcome her into the fold. (Picture book/tall tale. 7-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-56846-173-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
In a snowbound Swiss village, Matti figures it’s a good day to make a gingerbread man. He and his mother mix a batch of gingerbread and tuck it in the oven, but Matti is too impatient to wait ten minutes without peeking. When he opens the door, out pops a gingerbread baby, taunting the familiar refrain, “Catch me if you can.” The brash imp races all over the village, teasing animals and tweaking the noses of the citizenry, until there is a fair crowd on his heels intent on giving him a drubbing. Always he remains just out of reach as he races over the winterscape, beautifully rendered with elegant countryside and architectural details by Brett. All the while, Matti is busy back home, building a gingerbread house to entice the nervy cookie to safe harbor. It works, too, and Matti is able to spirit the gingerbread baby away from the mob. The mischief-maker may be a brat, but the gingerbread cookie is also the agent of good cheer, and Brett allows that spirit to run free on these pages. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-399-23444-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
Fact and fiction dovetail neatly in this tale of a wonderfully resolute child who finds a memorable way to convince her father that the newly-finished Brooklyn Bridge is safe to cross. Having watched the great bridge going up for most of her young life, Hannah is eager to walk it, but despite repeated, fact-laced appeals to reason (and Hannah is a positive fount of information about its materials and design), her father won’t be moved: “No little girl of mine will cross that metal monster!” Hannah finally hatches a far-fetched plan to convince him once and for all; can she persuade the renowned P.T. Barnum to march his corps of elephants across? She can, and does (actually, he was already planning to do it). Pham places Hannah, radiating sturdy confidence, within sepia-toned, exactly rendered period scenes that capture both the grandeur of the bridge in its various stages of construction, and the range of expressions on the faces of onlookers during its opening ceremonies and after. Readers will applaud Hannah’s polite persistence. (afterword, resources) (Picture book. 7-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-689-87011-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
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