Reviews: Picture Books, ages 4 & up
Wendy E. Betts
The Little Wooden Table by Bryna Notrog. Illustrated by Marilyn Smith
Romeiser
* The Gentleman and the Kitchen Maid by Diane Stanley. Illustrated
by Dennis Nolan
Sophie by Mem Fox. Illustrated by Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson
* I Was Dreaming to Come to America selected and illustrated by Veronica
Lawlor
* Only Opal: the Diary of a Young Girl by Opal Whiteley. Selected
by Jane Boulton. Illustrated by Barbara Cooney
NOTES FROM THE WINDOWSILL ISSN 1078-8697
An electronic journal of book reviews. Copyright 1997 Wendy E. Betts.
Reproduction for personal and non-profit use is permitted only if this
copyright notice is retained. Any other reproduction is prohibited
without permission. Mail w...@armory.com with comments or questions.
For info and archives, see http://www.armory.com/~web/notes.html
Vol. 5, No. 7f Picture Books: Beginning Readers, ages 4 & up 7/28/97
__ The Little Wooden Table_ by Bryna Notrog. Illustrated by Marilyn Smith
Romeiser. Zipper Press, 1997 (0-9652479-0-2) (no price listed)
When a little girl finds a little wooden table at a garage sale, she
sees past its worn, dusty surface to the beauty underneath. Her
mother tries to talk her out of buying it, but the little girl is sure
the table is meant for her, and it becomes one of her greatest
treasures. This story has a certain charm--I like the way a smiling
face suddenly appears on the table as the little girl brushes the dirt
off of it--but it suffers from stilted dialogue and a serious lack of
editing, including an inexcusable its/it's error. Additionally, the
black and white illustrations are extremely dated, with images of
femininity straight out of a 1950's magazine ad; the overall effect is
reminiscent of a cheap supermarket coloring book. (4-7/5-7)
__ The Gentleman and the Kitchen Maid_ by Diane Stanley. Illustrated by
Dennis Nolan. Dial, 1994 (0-8037-1320-7); Puffin, 1997
(0-14-056095-5) $5.99 pb
Hung across from each other in a museum gallery are two portraits, a
sweet, fresh-faced kitchen maid and a kind, gallant gentlemen, both
painted by Dutch masters. Unsurprisingly, over the years the two have
fallen in love, and despite criticism from the other paintings--"I
canÕt imagine what he sees in her," comments the Grand Duchess with
the large nose--they continue to gaze yearningly at each other,
"trapped in their different worlds, frozen in time." Then disaster
strikes: the kitchen maid is moved to another part of the museum.
Luckily, a young art student named Rusty has a special plan to give
the two lovers a happy ending.
Reading this story took me happily back to the time when one of my
favorite books was Don Freeman's _Norman the Doorman_; although they
don't seem to have much in common other than a museum setting, both
books bring a genuine spirit of warmth, humor and delight to the
subject of art. The illustrations give radiance and expression to the
characters in the paintings, painstakingly using the styles of
different artists to create the look of a museum gallery. Only the
most determined hater of mushy stuff could resist this. * (5-8/5-8)
__ Sophie_ by Mem Fox. Illustrated by Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson.
Harcourt Brace, 1994 (0-15-277160-3) $13.95; Voyager, 1997
(0-15-201598-1) $6.00 pb
(reprinted from the hardcover review, volume 2, number 131)
In the tradition of _Love You Forever_, Sophie is a deceptively simple
story about a grandpa and granddaughter who never stop loving each
other, even when time has reversed their physical roles. Although
very touching and beautifully written, this book may be too subtle for
its intended audience: the symbolical symmetry of the plot and the
theme of rebirth seen in the ending may seem like an easy way to
approach the subject of aging and death, but most young children wonÕt
be developmentally ready to understand it. The bold, vividly colored
illustrations are also somewhat challenging, with oddly proportioned
people and crowded scenes that are difficult to decipher. A lovely
book for the right child. (5-8/5-8)
__ I Was Dreaming to Come to America_ selected and illustrated by
Veronica Lawlor. Viking, 1995 (0-670-86164-2) $14.99; Puffin, 1997
(0-14-055622-2) $5.99 pb
(reprinted from the hardcover review, volume 3, number 10e)
Taking an unusual and memorable approach to American history, this
picture book matches text taken from the Ellis Island Oral History
Project with dreamy, surreal collage illustrations. The combination
seems odd at first--you'd expect memoirs of Ellis Island to be
illustrated with photographs, or at least serious realistic
paintings--but on closer inspection the text and images work
beautifully together. It was an exciting and bewildering time for
these travelers--as Golda Meir wrote, "going to America then was
almost like going to the moon"--and these striking, oddly proportioned
pictures help express the newness and strangeness implicit in each
memory, whether sad, joyous or both. This is one of the rare picture
books that truly seems to have no age limit: for anyone, it is a
brief but vivid glimpse at the immigrant experience. * (5 & up/6&
up)
Wendy E. Betts
She Said/She Said
__ Only Opal: the Diary of a Young Girl_ by Opal Whiteley. Selected by
Jane Boulton. Illustrated by Barbara Cooney. Philomel Books, 1994
(0-399-21990-0) $14.95; PaperStar, 1997 (0-698-11564-3) $5.95 pb
(reprinted from the hardcover review, volume 3, number 9f)
Review by Aspen Rogers, age seven:
The librarian read this book to us when I was in first grade. I liked
it so much that it became one of my favorite books. It is about a
girl who lives in a logging camp. Her real mother and father have
died, so she lives with a lady who doesn't like her very much. I
liked the way Opal named animals and a tree after famous people. It
was kind of sad when they cut down the tree. Everyone should read this
book--it's great!
Review by Peggy Rogers, Aspen's mother:
When I first read Only Opal, my only quarrel with my daughter's
opinion of it was that she was too inexperienced to recognize what an
extraordinary treasure it is. And yet she had recognized a great
deal. Opal speaks in a clear, authentic voice, looking with open eyes
at the world around her. In the book her words are arranged in short
lines, like verse:
New folks live by the mill
Dear Love her young husband does call her.
They are so happy.
When I gave her the eggs she smiled glad smiles
and kissed me--two on the cheeks
and one on the nose.
Then I had glad feels all over.
The cadences of her speech, with odd little turns of grammar, somehow
make her seem very much like a real person. It is interesting, then,
that controversy has surrounded the real Opal Whiteley, ever since the
first publication of her diary in 1920. A year after that
publication, the diary was denounced as a fraud, and it seemed that
Opal, then in her early twenties, had not really written the diary as
a child, in colored pencils on scraps of paper. But her words
continue to be read, and her unique style to be admired. Perhaps this
is one of those cases where the words themselves matter more than the
context that surrounds them. Barbara Cooney's radiant illustrations
complement the text perfectly. * (6-12/6-12)
Peggy Rogers
* indicates a book the reviewer feels is outstanding in its genre
--
Wendy E. Betts, Editor, "Notes from the Windowsill."
Reply to web at armory dot com (or at deepthought dot armory dot com)
"Fairy tales are beautiful, but very confusing." -- Sylvia Waugh