From Publishers Weekly
Sky, $15.95 (40p) ISBN 0-590-98451-9Like The Shine Man, Bartoletti's (No Man's Land) poignant story is also set during the Depression. "Do hoboes have Christmas?" a girl asks her down-and-out father, after weeks spent hopping freight trains. "They figure out a way," he tells her. The girl is taken in by a kindly woman while her father continues on his search for work, and the two reunite just in time for Christmas. Christiana's gloriously haunting, dreamy artwork captures all the pathos of this affecting tale. Ages 4-up.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Gr 2-4-Set sometime during the Great Depression, this story begins when a young girl and her father become homeless. Out of a job and money, they hop trains, riding from town to town, searching for "someplace good." The hardships of hobo life are conveyed both in Bartoletti's text and in Christiana's stylized gray- and brown-toned illustrations. Finally the father must leave his daughter with a kind woman who will care for her while he continues his search for work. The young girl's hopes and prayers for her Poppa are fulfilled on the last page as readers see him returning to her with packages on Christmas Eve. Although many young children have little awareness of the 1930s, this story will speak both to the homeless children of the 21st century and to those children of plenty, who might come to understand the pain of those without. A prefatory note describes the unique hobo communication system involving chalk figures depicted on the endpapers. Except for the textual references, these curious symbols do not appear in the story itself. A very different, and definitely not sugarcoated, Christmas tale.-G. C.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
