The mood is expectant as a farm family in northern Vermont awaits the first snowfall. The meadow’s gone brown, the pond is covered with ice, winter has come to the farm. Then one day, under a slate-gray sky, the air goes still: Snow is coming. The family’s two boys head for the owl woods to wait for the snow. They eat their sandwiches around a small fire, gazing upward. The snow begins to fall, a mere glitter, then with more purpose: “One by one, the flakes filled the cups of fallen leaves . . . the ground turned white.” Mice and squirrels scuttle for food, the evergreens begin to sag under their burden, the owl flies by, “silent as the smoke from our fire.” As dark begins to fall along with the snow, the boys douse their fire and head back home, the warm yellow light of its windows scything through the snowfall. Tripp’s (Thunderstorm, 1994) tone is just this side of solemn, a stately watchful waiting that will catch readers up. Kiesler’s (Taiko on a Windy Night, p. 583, etc.) muted oils communicate a sense of mystery along with the anticipation as the boys heads turned to the heavens, blinking in the wonder of it all. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-56402-426-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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As atmospheric as its companion, Twilight Comes Twice, this tone poem pairs poetically intense writing with luminescent oils featuring widely spaced houses, open lawns, and clumps of autumnal trees, all lit by a huge full moon. Fletcher tracks that moon’s nocturnal path in language rich in metaphor: “With silent slippers / it climbs the night stairs,” “staining earth and sky with a ghostly glow,” lighting up a child’s bedroom, the wings of a small plane, moonflowers, and, ranging further afield, harbor waves and the shells of turtle hatchlings on a beach. Using creamy brushwork and subtly muted colors, Kiesler depicts each landscape, each night creature from Luna moths to a sleepless child and her cat, as well as the great moon sweeping across star-flecked skies, from varied but never vertiginous angles. Closing with moonset, as dawn illuminates the world with a different kind of light, this makes peaceful reading either in season, or on any moonlit night. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2003
ISBN: 0-618-16451-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2003
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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One more myth dispelled for all the students who believe that their teachers live in their classrooms. During the last week of school, Mrs. Hartwell and her students reflect on the things they will miss, while also looking forward to the fun that summer will bring. The kids want to cheer up their teacher, whom they imagine will be crying over lesson plans and missing them all summer long. But what gift will cheer her up? Numerous ideas are rejected, until Eddie comes up with the perfect plan. They all cooperate to create a rhyming ode to the school year and their teacher. Love’s renderings of the children are realistic, portraying the diversity of modern-day classrooms, from dress and expression to gender and skin color. She perfectly captures the emotional trauma the students imagine their teachers will go through as they leave for the summer. Her final illustration hysterically shatters that myth, and will have every teacher cheering aloud. What a perfect end to the school year. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-58089-046-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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