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A VISIT TO OMA by Marisabina Russo

A VISIT TO OMA

by Marisabina Russo & illustrated by Marisabina Russo

Pub Date: April 26th, 1991
ISBN: 0-688-09623-9
Publisher: Greenwillow Books

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)