This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.Īlthough the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.Ī paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. This should do well at picture-book tour.Ī collection of parental wishes for a child. And dePaola's somber tones burst forth into satisfyingly brilliant sunsets. The retelling is pleasantly cadenced, even though it tells us more about the artist's need for serf-expression within any society than about Plains Indians. Isely-which doesn't really give much clue to its Native American source. In a full-page note, dePaola traces this story to Texas Wildflowers, Stories and Legends, a collection of newspaper articles by Ruth D. Patiently, he gazes at the sunset each evening till at last he is rewarded: brushes with sunset colors spring up for his use, returning next day-and each spring thereafter-as flowers. When it's his turn to go out into the hills "to think about being a man," a vision tells him to become a painter, using colors "as pure as.the evening sky." But though he works hard, Little Gopher is dissatisfied with his dull, dark paintings. Little Gopher can't keep up with the other Indian boys he prefers making and decorating small figures.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |