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Our Red-Handled Rolling Pin

Name: Our Red-Handled Rolling Pin
Author: Mary Elizabeth Kenney
ISBN: 978-1-5049-1163-4

AN ENHANCED MEMORY

by Mary Elizabeth Kenney ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 19, 2015

Intriguing generational narrative for young readers with an interest in history, particularly women’s history.

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An illustrated memoir of four generations of women at the kitchen table by semiretired middle school English teacher Kenney.

Kenney traces her family history, with a red-handled rolling pin symbolizing continuity. First introducing the memoir through her own childhood story of a china demitasse set (illustrated here in full color), Kenney shows that her own mother appreciated finer things and possessed the resources to do so. In contrast, her grandmother Mary Rose O’Brien Crowley—for whom the author was named, though they never met—worked from home as a baker after her husband’s industrial death at a young age. From her grandmother, Kenney inherited a love for baking. In turn, Kenney used the same red-handled rolling pin as a mother teaching her own children to bake. Of the four generations of women, the most affecting story is that of Mary Rose, raising her only daughter, Margaret, as a single parent with a cottage industry the sole source of financial support. With his habit of consuming a daily baked onion to ward off illness, Mary Rose’s unnamed father was a tangible tie to the old country. Interestingly, the only men featured or even mentioned in the memoir are Mary Rose’s father and dead husband. Notably, although Kenney does not specifically mention it, all three adult generations of women worked, at times when women frequently did not financially contribute to the family. In fact, the juxtaposition of two typically female symbols—rolling pin and kitchen table—with financially independent women helps this memoir-based children’s book stand out. Sometimes, though, the descriptions are unnecessarily confusing; for example, “Her mother, my grandmother, was Mary Rose O’Brien and then Crowley. Then means later when girls get married.” In addition, the introductory story—based on Kenney’s only memory of using her mother’s demitasse set—doesn’t necessarily tie into the theme represented by the titular rolling pin.

Intriguing generational narrative for young readers with an interest in history, particularly women’s history.

Pub Date: May 19, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-1163-4

Page Count: 30

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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ABIYOYO RETURNS

by Pete Seeger & Paul Dubois Jacobs & illustrated by Michael Hays ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2001

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The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-689-83271-0

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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THE DEAF MUSICIANS
by Pete Seeger & Paul Dubois Jacobs & illustrated by R. Gregory Christie

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SOME FRIENDS TO FEED
by Pete Seeger & Paul Dubois Jacobs & illustrated by Michael Hays

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TURN! TURN! TURN!
adapted by Pete Seeger & illustrated by Wendy Anderson Halperin

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CORALINE

by Neil Gaiman ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister:...

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A magnificently creepy fantasy pits a bright, bored little girl against a soul-eating horror that inhabits the reality right next door.

Coraline’s parents are loving, but really too busy to play with her, so she amuses herself by exploring her family’s new flat. A drawing-room door that opens onto a brick wall becomes a natural magnet for the curious little girl, and she is only half-surprised when, one day, the door opens onto a hallway and Coraline finds herself in a skewed mirror of her own flat, complete with skewed, button-eyed versions of her own parents. This is Gaiman’s (American Gods, 2001, etc.) first novel for children, and the author of the Sandman graphic novels here shows a sure sense of a child’s fears—and the child’s ability to overcome those fears. “I will be brave,” thinks Coraline. “No, I am brave.” When Coraline realizes that her other mother has not only stolen her real parents but has also stolen the souls of other children before her, she resolves to free her parents and to find the lost souls by matching her wits against the not-mother. The narrative hews closely to a child’s-eye perspective: Coraline never really tries to understand what has happened or to fathom the nature of the other mother; she simply focuses on getting her parents back and thwarting the other mother for good. Her ability to accept and cope with the surreality of the other flat springs from the child’s ability to accept, without question, the eccentricity and arbitrariness of her own—and every child’s own—reality. As Coraline’s quest picks up its pace, the parallel world she finds herself trapped in grows ever more monstrous, generating some deliciously eerie descriptive writing.

Not for the faint-hearted—who are mostly adults anyway—but for stouthearted kids who love a brush with the sinister: Coraline is spot on. (Fiction. 9-12)