The Big Snow
By: Berta and Elmer Hader
Medal Winner
NOT REVIEWED
When the geese begin to fly south, the leaves flutter down from the trees and the cold winds begin to blow from the north, the animals of the woods and meadows, big and small, prepare for the long, cold winter ahead when the countryside is hidden under a deep blanket of snow. They gather food and look for warm, snug places in the ground, trees, caves or thickets, where they can find protection against the icy winds.
It might have been hard for the birds and animals of the hillside to survive when the Big Snow came if their good friends, who lived in the little stone house, had not remembered to put food out for them.
Here, in many beautiful pictures, the Haders show how winter comes to the woodland as the busy animals make their preparations.
From the dust jacket of an early printing
All Around the Town
By: Phyllis McGinley
Illustrated by: Helen Stone
Honor
Reviewed by: Sherry Early
Recommended age: Preschool, Kindergarten
Also read and recommended by: Sandy Hall
All Around the Town is an alphabet book with a short city-themed poem for each letter of the alphabet. Some of the poems’ subjects are a bit outdated: “D’s the Dairy Driver” and “H is for the horses/That haul their city loads.” Nevertheless, the poems are delightful little vignettes of city life in the 1940’s. I especially liked “Q is for the Quietness/Of Sunday avenues” and “S is the snorting subway/That slithers below the ground.” As you can see, Ms. McGinley uses simple poetic devices such as alliteration and personification to draw the reader or listener into the poetry and make it memorable. This book would be a lovely introduction to poetry for preschool or kindergarten story time.
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★
REVIEW TEAM FAVORITE
Blueberries for Sal
By: Robert McCloskey
Honor
Reviewed by: Sara Masarik
Also read and recommended by: Christine Kallner, Jeannette Tulis, Sandy Hall, Sherry Early, Tanya Arnold
If I were asked for the ten picture books that are not, for any reason, to be missed, this would always be on my list. The story itself is completely charming and a joy entirely on its own. The illustration, however, is not “as good as the story.” The illustration is in fact absolute perfection.
McCloskey’s pen and ink drawings are masterpieces. The scenes with Sal and her mother are done with fine lines and light texture. The scenes on the mountain are done with a heavier hand and communicate the scale and heft of the trees and the bears. Sal is timelessly adorable, and the mother is beautiful in her ordinariness. The kitchen in which they can the blueberries is like a snapshot in time. Sal standing on the chair in her leather shoes with eyelet cutouts gives the scene authenticity and a sense of old-fashioned loveliness. That is a scene that I want to live in.
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Fish In The Air
By: Kurt Wiese
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Straight out of China, which Kurt Wiese knows well, comes the atmosphere for this tale of what Tai Fung, which means Big Wind, did to change the ideas of the little Chinese boy named Fish, who had persuaded his father, Honorable Fish, to buy him the biggest fish-shaped kite he could find.
From the dust jacket
Juanita
By: Leo Politi
Honor
NOT REVIEWED
Juanita's mother made her a rose-colored dress for her fifth birthday, and her father gave her a white dove. In gay pictures, Leo Politi tells the story of the birthday party, and of the even more important Easter blessing of the animals.
For in the Springtime, on the Saturday before Easter Sunday, the animals of Olvera Street were blessed. Juanita carried her dove, and Señora Carmela brought her burro, laden with flowers, and Carlos led the procession with a gentle brick-red cow wearing a garland of gardenias. Goats and lambs, rabbits, roosters, and baskets of puppies and kittens followed. The procession wound slowly through Olvera Street to the Old Mission Church where the Padre blessed the animals one by one.
A colorful book, lighthearted and charming as only a Leo Politi book can be.
From the dust jacket
