Halperin’s great gift is to make expressive and exquisitely detailed pictures: large ones to cover the page; and smaller related vignettes, often in a row along the sides or top or bottom like an ancient altarpiece. She does this to excellent effect in Cates’s gentle story of Lolly, who at last gets to spend a month with Auntie Zep but finds she misses her parents terribly. Auntie Zep takes her to the attic to retrieve from an old trunk the Secret Remedy Book, bound in flowered wallpaper and written in a spidery hand. There are seven remedies that must be done before the first hoot of an owl. Lolly and Aunt Zep savor a glass of apple juice, until they can almost taste the very tree it came from. Other remedies include planting, observing, and reading that very special passage in a favorite book. By bedtime and the owl’s hoot, they have done all seven, including the last, which is “Dream of doing great things. You must think of one small, great thing you can do tomorrow.” Solace, ritual, simplicity, tenderness, and care for the natural world are offered on each page as naturally as breathing, and the pale radiance of Halperin’s illustrations bring comfort and joy. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: July 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-439-35226-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
At her best, Rylant’s (The Ticky-Tacky Doll, below, etc.) sweetness and sentiment fills the heart; in this outing, however, sentimentality reigns and the end result is pretty gooey. Pandora keeps a lighthouse: her destiny is to protect ships at sea. She’s lonely, but loves her work. She rescues Seabold and heals his broken leg, and he stays on to mend his shipwrecked boat. This wouldn’t be so bad but Pandora’s a cat and Seabold a dog, although they are anthropomorphized to the max. Then the duo rescue three siblings—mice!—and make a family together, although Rylant is careful to note that Pandora and Seabold each have their own room. Choosing what you love, caring for others, making a family out of love, it is all very well, but this capsizes into silliness. Formatted to look like the start of a new series. Oh, dear. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-689-84880-3
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
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