While ultimately it may not entirely work as story or history, Krebs offers a glimpse into a part of human culture most youngsters—or oldsters—may not know at all. In rhyme, she tracks China’s Silk Road, evocatively used these days as a metaphor for all kinds of cross-cultural memes, as a kind of exotic school chant. There’s a running chorus, “We’re riding on a caravan, a bumpy humpy caravan,” and there’s the first-person plural narrative, also rhymed, from Xi’an to Kashgar as silks are traded for wool, rice for bread. The yearlong trek ends at Kashgar’s Sunday market, which still exists today. The colorful pictures, made with bits of silk brocade and marbled paper collage as well as watercolor, show many kinds of costume and many ages and genders of caravan travelers. The pictures are busy with animals and wagons, desert and mountains. Author’s notes cover some background, but no sources are given. Adult readers will probably yearn for more information, but children will enjoy the bouncing rhythm and the intricate images. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-84148-343-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An alphabetic celebration of the various sights and attractions of Washington, D.C., falls victim to a fuzzy definition of its audience. Melmed (Fright Night Flight, p. 1229, etc.) tidily organizes the capital from A (Air and Space Museum) to Z (National Zoo), describing each attraction in rhyming couplets and further explicating specific features in teeny prose print. Thus F is accompanied by both “Who searches for the Ten Most Wanted / And faces terrorists, undaunted? / Who’ll ambush the most clever spy / or solve a crime? The FBI!” and “Forensic scientists at the FBI can enlarge fingerprints found at a crime scene and search through their computer data banks to find a match.” Lessac’s (On the Same Day in March, not reviewed, etc.) cheery folk-arty illustrations present thumbnail details with as much energy as broad landscapes teeming with happy multiethnic throngs. The illustrations work well with the prose explications, and the level of detail provided by both will delight older children who can get past the young-seeming format and who have the background necessary to provide historical/civic context. But the verse, which never rises above the level of doggerel, is way out of sync with the prose. It insults the readers who would be captivated by the prose and frequently fails to illuminate sufficiently its subjects for younger children. An attractive package that tries to be too many things to too many people. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-688-17561-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
Between portrait photos taken almost nine decades apart, Steig crustily introduces his Mom, his Pop, and his childhood world—a world where “there were almost no electric lights, cars or telephones—and definitely no TV.” Like his prose, his cartoons are sketchy and childlike, passing with a turn of the page from a gory, imagined battlefield scene to views of the janitor’s tough-looking dog and other neighborhood pets. He barely shows or mentions siblings, friends, or his Bronx neighborhood—and even younger viewers will notice that, despite the title, many of his figures are hatless. So what will children get from this? Next to that whippersnapper James Stevenson’s When I Was Nine (1986), but still distant, generation, not much more than the bare hint that Steig, too, was young. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-009700-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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