When Uncle Benjamin writes a letter to Sara’s mother, his sister, in Vilna inviting her and Grandmother Hanna to the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, he requests that Sara’s mother bring with her a photograph of their mother. But Sara has never seen the photograph mentioned in the letter. After searching through her mother’s things, she pays a visit to her Great-aunt Lisa who bluntly tells her that Grandmother Hanna is not really the mother of Sara’s mother, but her stepmother. Sara’s “real” grandmother, who was Great-aunt Lisa’s sister, died giving birth to Uncle Benjamin. Initially angry with Great-aunt Lisa for revealing the secret, Sara forgives her when she makes a gift to Grandmother Hanna of the brooch worn by her sister in the photograph. This bland plot fails to generate much interest for young readers and no mention is made of the imminent danger to Poland’s Jews in 1939. Black-and-white drawings lend an antique look to the text, but do little to attract an audience. (Fiction. 8-10)
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2002
ISBN: 0-374-35920-2
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
PLB 0-531-33140-7 Ketcham’s first book is based on an allegedly true story of a childhood incident in the life of Johann Sebastian Bach. It starts with a couple of pages regaling the Bach home and all the Johanns in the family, who made their fame through music. After his father’s death, Johann Sebastian goes to live with his brother, Johann Christoph, where he boasts that he is the best organist in the world. Johann Christoph contradicts him: “Old Adam Reincken is the best.” So Johann Sebastian sets out to hear the master himself. In fact, he is humbled to tears, but there is hope that he will be the world’s best organist one day. Johann Sebastian emerges as little more than a brat, Reincken as more of a suggestion than a character. Bush’s illustrations are most transporting when offering details of the landscape, but his protagonist is too impish to give the story much authority. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-531-30140-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
Adler (also with Widener, Lou Gehrig, 1997, etc.) sets his fictional story during the week of July 14, 1932, in the Bronx, when the news items that figure in this tale happened. A boy gets a dime for his birthday, instead of the bicycle he longs for, because it is the Great Depression, and everyone who lives in his neighborhood is poor. While helping his friend Jacob sell newspapers, he discovers that his own father, who leaves the house with a briefcase each day, is selling apples on Webster Avenue along with the other unemployed folk. Jacob takes the narrator to Yankee Stadium with the papers, and people don’t want to hear about the Coney Island fire or the boy who stole so he could get something to eat in jail. They want to hear about Babe Ruth and his 25th homer. As days pass, the narrator keeps selling papers, until the astonishing day when Ruth himself buys a paper from the boy with a five-dollar bill and tells him to keep the change. The acrylic paintings bask in the glow of a storied time, where even row houses and the elevated train have a warm, solid presence. The stadium and Webster Avenue are monuments of memory rather than reality in a style that echoes Thomas Hart Benton’s strong color and exaggerated figures. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-201378-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
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