Every week, Celeste calls on Oma, her great-grandmother, receiving a warm welcome and listening patiently to Oma's long stories—which Celeste can't understand: Oma doesn't speak English. But Celeste can fashion her own story; perhaps Oma is describing a long-ago arranged marriage to a man so distasteful that she fled just before she would have changed into her nightgown, causing a scandal but surviving it to make a happy marriage later. Celeste's tale of what might have been is both the kind of history that lurks in any family's past and evidence that, ancient as Oma is, Celeste believes in the reality of her youth. Using bold areas of solid color in dynamic compositions enriched with borders and decorative patterns, Russo evokes Oma's cozy room and subtly suggests Celeste's mixed feelings. A perceptive glimpse of a child's imaginative concept of her elder's past. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: April 26, 1991
ISBN: 0-688-09623-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Trickling, bubbling, swirling, rushing, a river flows down from its mountain beginnings, past peaceful country and bustling city on its way to the sea. Hooper (The Drop in My Drink, 1998, etc.) artfully evokes the water’s changing character as it transforms from “milky-cold / rattling-bold” to a wide, slow “sliding past mudflats / looping through marshes” to the end of its journey. Willey, best known for illustrating Geraldine McCaughrean’s spectacular folk-tale collections, contributes finely detailed scenes crafted in shimmering, intricate blues and greens, capturing mountain’s chill, the bucolic serenity of passing pastures, and a sense of mystery in the water’s shadowy depths. Though Hooper refers to “the cans and cartons / and bits of old wood” being swept along, there’s no direct conservation agenda here (for that, see Debby Atwell’s River, 1999), just appreciation for the river’s beauty and being. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7636-0792-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
Keena Ford’s second-grade class is taking a field trip to the United States Capitol. This good-hearted girl works hard to behave, but her impulsive decisions have a way of backfiring, no matter how hard she tries to do the right thing. In this second book in a series, Keena cuts off one of her braids and later causes a congressman to fall down the stairs. The first-person journal format is a stretch—most second graders can barely write, let alone tell every detail of three days of her life. Children will wonder how Keena can cut one of her “two thick braids” all the way off by pretend-snipping in the air. They will be further confused because the cover art clearly shows Keena with a completely different hairdo on the field trip than the one described. Though a strong African-American heroine is most welcome in chapter books and Keena and her family are likable and realistic, this series needs more polish before Keena writes about her next month in school. (Fiction. 6-9)
Pub Date: July 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3264-3
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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