In this poetic reverie, a sharecropper’s son dreams of riding with Casey Jones and his fireman Sim Webb. The whistle of passing trains stirs something in the child: “Papa says it’s the sound of leaving that speaks to my soul.” In Long’s stately paintings, done in dark browns and golds, Casey and Sim stand heroically, their oversized steam engine hurtles past like a storm cloud to its tragic end, and the child, always with an inward look, moves with his equally heroic father from cotton fields, through seasons, to an eventual, long-wished-for farewell on a train platform. In her afterword, Johnson suggests a link between the trains that Jones and his fellow engineers drove through the Mississippi Delta at the turn of the 20th century and the urge to go that sparked the Great Migration. Perhaps—but the dream of boarding a train to find one’s “place in the big wide world” is one that echoes through every generation. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-82609-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
To commemorate well-documented old sightings of huge sea serpents gamboling off the New England coast, Ibatoulline paints richly detailed scenes of wide seas and narrow shores, of small boats, monstrous writhing coils and astonished onlookers—to which Anderson pairs an old man’s reminiscence in verse: “The serpent was twirling, just chasing its tail, / And showed all intention of staying. / ‘Is it back in the deep?’ ‘Is it eating our sheep?’ / ‘I think,’ I said, ‘that the serpent is playing.’ ” Young monster lovers will share the wonder of this never-solved mystery, and applaud when a company of sea-hunter’s strenuous efforts to kill the monster yield only a large mackerel. A 19th-century tale presented in grand, 19th-century style. (afterword) (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: June 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7636-2038-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Newcomer Santoro’s story of the ice cream truck that pined for a more important role in life suffers from a premise that’s well-worn and still fraying—the person or object that longs to be something “more” in life, only to find out that his or its lot in life is enough, after all. Isaac the ice cream truck envies all the bigger, larger, more important vehicles he encounters (the big wheels are depicted as a rude lot, sullen, surly, and snarling, hardly a group to excite much envy) in a day, most of all the fire trucks and their worthy occupants. When Isaac gets that predictable boost to his self-image—he serves up ice cream to over-heated firefighters after a big blaze—it comes as an unmistakable putdown to the picture-book audience: the children who cherished Isaac—“They would gather around him, laughing and happy”—weren’t reason enough for him to be contented. Santoro equips the tale with a tune of Isaac’s very own, and retro scenes in tropical-hued colored pencil that deftly convey the speed of the trucks with skating, skewed angles. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-5296-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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