Customer Reviews

Chico

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The illsutrations are delightful. I read this book with my niece and nephew, both New York City kids. They were enchanted by the birth of the calf, the rattlesnake, the antelope and the beautiful Chico. At the end of the reading, they said, "We want to go see where Sandra lives and look for the rainbow."

When a story generates curiosity in a child, I consider the author's mission accomplished!

As a school librarian, I found this an excellent book to add to our collection. It is just the right length to read to a class when they visit the library. Most of the students were amazed to find out this is based on a true story. The illustrations by Dan Andreasen are absolutley beautiful and accompany every page of text.

Beautiful illustrations and a wonderful story. My grandson (age 2 1/2) was just enchanted by this book. He always wants me to read it to him when I visit.

this proved to be a wonderful book for my 11 yr. old granddaughter who is in love with horses. she read it immediately and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Justice O'Connor's "Chico" summarizes a day out riding with her horse - Chico. Hearing of a new calf, she wants to see it, and rides out far from sight of her home. Sandra finds the calf, but knows she cannot pet it because the mother is near. On the way home, Chico is frightened by a rattlesnake and Sandra nearly loses her seating. Fortunately she holds on and returns home where she tells her father about her adventure. They then return to the area in their truck, and Sandra gets to pet the calf. On the way home, Sandra asks if they can drive to the end of a rainbow - her father reminds her that they need to be home for dinner.

"Chico" also briefly summarizes the chores that young Sandra performed while living on the farm.

Sandra Day O'Connor, Chico (Dutton, 2005)

The front cover of Chico proclaims "a true story from the childhood of the first woman Supreme Court Justice." Putting aside the slightly questionable grammar of that subtitle, the question it has to raise in your mind is: is the story contained in the book less important then the fact that it was written by the first woman etc.?". Unfortunately, the answer is yes; this is likely not a story that would have made it into a kids' book had it been submitted by you, me, or Joe Blow.

As one would expect from a woman who spent the better part of her career writing Supreme Court opinions, the actual mechanics of the story are solid; the spelling, grammar (with the exception of one painful slip near the beginning that still has me amused days later), etc. are all excellent. The illustrations are quite nice, though having a ten-year-old daughter (and a ten-year-old sister-in-law), I'd have to say the child in those illustrations looks considerably older than six. (Say, ten.) But that's a minor point.

What's really missing here is a sense of pace, or more specifically a sense of the structure that one would normally expect pace to take. In everything from Shakespeare to the latest Dan Brown potboiler, there's a conventional way to structure one's pace: there's the buildup, there's the climax, and there's the resolution/denouement (depending on the tone of your book). Well, that's quite an oversimplification, but you get the idea. O'Connor gives us a decent setup, then we wait for the climax. And wait. And keep waiting. Upon reflection, this is actually really impressive in a thirty-two page book; one usually doesn't get this much waiting without reading Ha Jin. There are a few places that seem as if they're going to be climaxes, but no such luck. Without a climax, the resolution feels oddly (wait for it...) anticlimactic. I'm wondering if kids will notice this as much as adults will; I'm thinking about having my wife (who's a day care teacher) test-drive it on her class.

Seems more an artifact for O'Connor fans than an actual kids' book. Not that there's anything wrong with that. ** ½