One summer Saturday in the life of Laura, a farmer's daughter who accompanies her parents and older brother to Lexington, Kentucky, where they sell their produce at an open-air market. They load their pickup before dawn and return after dark. In between, Laura stays busy refilling containers at the stand, with some time off to play with Betsy, her Saturday friend, whose mother runs a flower stall. A double-sized foldout spread shows Laura exploring four parts of the crowded, colorful market. From Johnson (with Celeste Lewis, Lost, 1996), an appealing story of a hardworking family and a little girl who knows how to do her job and have fun at the same time. Add it to a growing shelf of recent stories about markets: Nancy White Carlstrom's Baby-O (1992), Omar Casta§eda's Abuela's Weave (1993), and Pat Mora's Uno, Dos, Tres: One, Two, Three (1996). (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-531-30014-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
In a 12-line poem that continues in the pattern set in the eponymous first two lines, Blos moves from the literal to the less obvious—either conceptual or poetic—concluding with ``A thought, a poem./A house, a home!'' A page turn between the first and second half of each line turns the verse into an amusing guessing game, especially with the addition of Poppel's vibrant, freely rendered watercolors. This would make an attractive participatory interlude at storytime. (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: April 2, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-73214-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1992
First published in 1988 in Japan, this tale does not survive its translation. A small fox experiences winter for the first time, tumbling, scampering, and running in the snow-covered world. Soon he returns to his mother complaining that his paws hurt and tingle with cold. Mother takes one of little fox’s paws and “magically turned it into the cute hand of a human child.” She sends her child off to town to buy mittens, warning her child to show only the human hand to the storekeeper. The small fox finds the town and the storekeeper, and politely asks for mittens, sticking a paw through the open doorway. In his confusion he puts forward the wrong paw; but the storekeeper, once he is sure the fox has real money, finds a pair of mittens and puts them on the fox’s paws. The fox returns home, baffled by his mother’s fear of humans. The plot has folkloric elements, but the text is wordy, sentimental, and pedestrian. Although the art can’t compensate for the text, the jacket painting holds the promise of luminous illustrations within, with a glowing white fox against of soft pearl-gray landscape. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1999
ISBN: 0-8248-2128-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1999
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