Amazon.com Review
"Sometimes I thought being a big sister would be fun. And sometimes I thought it wouldn't be fun and that Mom and Dad didn't need to have anyone around but me." The sentiments of young Johanna will ring true to most oldest siblings, who will immediately relate to the ambiguous feelings children may have about gaining a new member of the family. (It's tough to lose the attention-guaranteed alpha-child position, but it also turns out to be pretty cool to have someone to play with.) In
Frog Face: My Little Sister and Me, we witness Johanna's developing relationship with her sister through a series of lovely, amusing pictures taken over the course of several years by the girls' mother, fine art photographer Janet Delaney. Author John Schindel accompanies these delightful, spontaneous images with heartfelt text inspired by his own two daughters, which reveals how Johanna moves from thinking the new baby "spent too much time with mom," to considering "maybe having a little sister was going to be okay," to confirming that "being sisters is special." Oldest siblings recently faced with a new baby will appreciate seeing how another child copes with this familial upheaval, and those who have had 20 or 30 or 50 years to adjust will smile with recognition and love.
--Brangien Davis
From Publishers Weekly
Sometimes tender, sometimes hilarious photographs of Delaney's own daughters span from when the little sister is an "itty-bitty, goofy-looking but sort of cute, squishy" infant to when she is old enough to be a real playmate. Schindel's (Dear Daddy) evenly paced first-person narrative chronicles the shifting phases of sisterhood while authentically capturing the cadences of a delightful older sibling: "Even though we don't get along all the time and sometimes I want to sit on her, I'm lucky she's mine." At one point the older girl darkly notes that "frog-face" (her nickname for the baby) "spent too much time with Mom"?an observation accompanied by a brooding portrait, one of the few in black-and-white. This sentiment is well integrated into the believably conflicted, loving relationship between the two girls. Schindel's text has an offhand humor; the author wisely avoids sentimentality, and the book never reads like a tract about how to handle jealousy. The interplay between text and photographs is as symbiotic as its subjects. The intimacy and humor of this photo essay is a rare treat; readers may well feel they are watching the sisters' growing friendship unfold before their eyes. Ages 2-7.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
