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Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
Grade 2-7. Bedard dips into the life of Willa Cather, extracting an incident from her childhood that intrigues on several levels. At once, this is the story of a girl uprooted from her well-loved (Virginia) home and transported to a far-different (Nebraska) landscape, a tale of hardships faced by early settlers, and an evocation of the beauty of the prairie. Although Willa initially resents leaving her home and her dog (a heart-tugging scene depicts Old Vic straining at her chain as the Cather family's wagon retreats down the road), she eventually becomes enamored with the "strong and still and free" land. Unfortunately, even in the appended afterword, Bedard never identifies the Divide (a broad strip of prairie between the Little Blue and Republican Rivers in south central Nebraska), doesn't explain the reference to Old Vic's wearing leather shoes (Mr. Cather made them to soothe Willa's concern about the dog walking on rocky terrain), or tell how it happened that a ready-made house was available upon the family's arrival (relatives already lived there). What does come through is the sustenance the land gave Cather and, later, the inspiration it provided for her writing. With broad strokes and a sweep of colors that match the passing seasons, McCully deftly secures on paper the expansiveness of the prairie. Her one close-up of the young Willa captures the rounded face and determined-looking eyes found in Edward Steichen's later photographs of the famous novelist. For older students, a good link to Ann T. Keene's Willa Cather (Messner, 1994) and to Cather's O Pioneers! and My Antonia; for younger children, a look at a staunch protagonist with a great spirit for living.?Barbara Elleman, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A picture book about what Willa Cather may have experienced as a child when her family moved west. Winter on the plains, on the Divide in Nebraska, was a mean season: ``There were no farms, no hills, no trees, only the flat, silent land beneath the vast, unbroken sky. She felt they had come to the end of things.'' But then came spring, ``like a shy child bringing gifts of flowers to the door,'' and Willa melts. As Bedard (Painted Devil, 1994, etc.) tells it, Cather delighted in the china sky, the fresh-plowed earth, and the few scattered neighbors: Swedes and Danes, Bohemians and Norwegians. ``Their speech was slow, their words were spare.'' The child comes to love the place: Spring slips into a hot, sunflowered summer, which gives way to a copper-colored autumn, the land ``strong and still and free,'' and brought to life in McCully's watercolors, which can be pensive, expansive, or joy-filled, as required. The metaphors are overtaxed (Willa marvels over the shells she brought with her from the East, ``so plain without, so pearled within''--just like her neighbors, just like the Divide), but a sense emerges of what it is like to be young and scared in a new landscape. The afterword makes reference to Cather's writings, but does not list specific sources for Bedard's text. (Picture book. 4-8) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
See all Editorial Reviews
Grade 2-7. Bedard dips into the life of Willa Cather, extracting an incident from her childhood that intrigues on several levels. At once, this is the story of a girl uprooted from her well-loved (Virginia) home and transported to a far-different (Nebraska) landscape, a tale of hardships faced by early settlers, and an evocation of the beauty of the prairie. Although Willa initially resents leaving her home and her dog (a heart-tugging scene depicts Old Vic straining at her chain as the Cather family's wagon retreats down the road), she eventually becomes enamored with the "strong and still and free" land. Unfortunately, even in the appended afterword, Bedard never identifies the Divide (a broad strip of prairie between the Little Blue and Republican Rivers in south central Nebraska), doesn't explain the reference to Old Vic's wearing leather shoes (Mr. Cather made them to soothe Willa's concern about the dog walking on rocky terrain), or tell how it happened that a ready-made house was available upon the family's arrival (relatives already lived there). What does come through is the sustenance the land gave Cather and, later, the inspiration it provided for her writing. With broad strokes and a sweep of colors that match the passing seasons, McCully deftly secures on paper the expansiveness of the prairie. Her one close-up of the young Willa captures the rounded face and determined-looking eyes found in Edward Steichen's later photographs of the famous novelist. For older students, a good link to Ann T. Keene's Willa Cather (Messner, 1994) and to Cather's O Pioneers! and My Antonia; for younger children, a look at a staunch protagonist with a great spirit for living.?Barbara Elleman, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A picture book about what Willa Cather may have experienced as a child when her family moved west. Winter on the plains, on the Divide in Nebraska, was a mean season: ``There were no farms, no hills, no trees, only the flat, silent land beneath the vast, unbroken sky. She felt they had come to the end of things.'' But then came spring, ``like a shy child bringing gifts of flowers to the door,'' and Willa melts. As Bedard (Painted Devil, 1994, etc.) tells it, Cather delighted in the china sky, the fresh-plowed earth, and the few scattered neighbors: Swedes and Danes, Bohemians and Norwegians. ``Their speech was slow, their words were spare.'' The child comes to love the place: Spring slips into a hot, sunflowered summer, which gives way to a copper-colored autumn, the land ``strong and still and free,'' and brought to life in McCully's watercolors, which can be pensive, expansive, or joy-filled, as required. The metaphors are overtaxed (Willa marvels over the shells she brought with her from the East, ``so plain without, so pearled within''--just like her neighbors, just like the Divide), but a sense emerges of what it is like to be young and scared in a new landscape. The afterword makes reference to Cather's writings, but does not list specific sources for Bedard's text. (Picture book. 4-8) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
See all Editorial Reviews
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