A very determined young lady knows precisely what she wants to wear. Ella Sarah is in her jammies (with a pattern of white sheep on bright blue) and announcing that she wants to wear “my pink polka-dot pants, my dress with orange-and-green flowers, my purple-and-blue striped socks, my yellow shoes, and my red hat.” Mom, Dad, and big sister have other ideas for her attire, but Ella Sarah repeats her desired outfit emphatically at each suggestion. When readers see her friends gathered for a tea party, it’s clear that they all knew just what they wanted to wear—a riot of mismatched color and pattern. Chodos-Irvine uses printmaking for these fabulously patterned images, where wallpaper, rugs, and toys create wonderful rhythms. Ella Sarah’s body language, which goes from determined to dejected to defiant to dogmatic, contrasts with the posturing of her parents and sibling, seen from Ella Sarah’s point of view, heads cut off by the picture plane. A wonderfully realized artistic conceit with a storyline guaranteed to tickle the fancy of baby fashionistas and their families. (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-15-216413-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2003
When Farmer Brown visits the city, he hears all kinds of mechanical noises—toots, whistles, sirens, jackhammers, different wheels—all amusingly spelled out for readers and listeners to imitate and illustrated in Brown's gentle, idiosyncratic style, employing a soft, rich wash of artfully muted colors with the shapes mildly defined by a scattering of minute dots. A worthy successor to Margaret Wise Brown's Noisy books. (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: Aug. 19, 1992
ISBN: 0-688-10028-7
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1992
As in Tell Me a Story, Mama (1989) and other books this team has created, the importance of family gets thematic pride of place here. Preparing to move from an urban apartment, a black family spends more time saying good-bye to friends, neighbors, and relatives (``We said good-bye to the cousins all day long'') than packing. In Soman's large, golden-brown watercolors, readers can follow the play of emotions in the faces of parents and children as they hug, kiss, shake hands, or just speak quietly to one another, until the narrator and his father, pregnant mother, and older sister sit smiling together in a room the movers have emptied, then wave one last good-bye from the street. A gently reassuring view of a common, and often traumatic, experience. (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-531-05992-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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