Vermont artist Jackson, best known for the distinctive cows decorating cartons of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, strews a string of rural landscapes with similarly eyeless, stylized Holsteins in this series of New England farmscapes. A one-word caption beneath each small, but powerful watercolor provides spare commentary that ranges from literal (“Barn,” “Kittens”) to poetic (the most widely-angled landscape is labeled “Xanadu”); in an afterword, Jackson frets about the decline of traditional dairy farming. Only farm buildings or the occasional tractor betray a human presence here. Though the black-and-white ruminants remain the same, other figures or features sometimes add an element of surprise by taking on unusual colors; the “Road” is dark red, for instance, and a barn seen through “Snow” is orange and lemon-yellow. The pictures in this artist’s showcase are tableaus that tell no stories, but reflective viewers may catch a hint of the slow rhythms of a vanishing way of life. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2003
ISBN: 0-618-16599-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
Part of a spate of books intent on bringing the garbage collectors in children’s lives a little closer, this almost matches...
Listeners will quickly take up the percussive chorus—“Dump it in, smash it down, drive around the Trashy town! Is the trash truck full yet? NO”—as they follow burly Mr. Gilly, the garbage collector, on his rounds from park to pizza parlor and beyond.
Flinging cans and baskets around with ease, Mr. Gilly dances happily through streetscapes depicted with loud colors and large, blocky shapes; after a climactic visit to the dump, he roars home for a sudsy bath.
Part of a spate of books intent on bringing the garbage collectors in children’s lives a little closer, this almost matches Eve Merriam’s Bam Bam Bam (1995), also illustrated by Yaccarino, for sheer verbal and visual volume. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 30, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-027139-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
Essentially a follow-up to Robert Kraus’s Leo the Late Bloomer (1971) and like tales of developing competency, this follows an exuberant child from morning wash-up to lights out at night, cataloguing the tasks and skills he has mastered. Activities include dressing himself and joining in school activities, choosing his own books, helping with dinner and other household responsibilities, and taking a bath alone before bedtime. In Aliki’s sunny, simplified pictures, it’s a child’s world, seen from low angles and with adults putting in only occasional appearances. Like the lad, the fitfully rhymed text gallops along, sometimes a little too quickly—many illustrations are matched to just a word or two, so viewers aren’t always given much time to absorb one image before being urged on to the next—but underscoring the story’s bustling energy. Young readers and pre-readers will respond enthusiastically to this child’s proud self-assurance, and be prompted to take stock of their own abilities too. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-028929-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
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