GRANDPA BLOWS HIS PENNY WHISTLE UNTIL THE ANGELS SING

When Little Boy James falls off the barn roof one Sunday morning and won’t wake up, Grandpa makes a rare trip up the hill to church—but he doesn’t pray the way his tagalong granddaughter expects him to. Roth (Happy Birthday Mr. Kang, p. 114, etc.) pairs her long but simply told miracle tale with huge, stunning collages made from tissue, handmade papers, fabrics, and leaves. Her small, crumpled figures float upon wide abstract backgrounds colored in hues chosen, she writes, to evoke dry, dusty, late summer days in America’s heartland. From the opening scenes caught through her “windows” as Little Boy James protests the confinement of church, the design shifts to reflect not only the setting, but also the moment in the story. The little sister standing alone in a narrow frame, the tiny brother on a vast swath of chenille, the tweedy doctor “flying” from his car across a sweep of blood-red earth, or the expanse of patchwork “fields” stretching between the house and the church aren’t simply pictures, they are a point of view. The congregation listens silently to long-winded Reverend Wilson, until Grandpa pulls out a penny whistle and blows a tune so sad and lonely that a choir of angels (garbed in transparent net) comes down through the stained-glass windows and fills the church. They follow him home, to sing around James’s bed until he opens his eyes. It’s a heart-filling (not to mention eye-filling) episode that will leave few readers unmoved—and the art is astonishing. (Picture book. 9-11)