Amazon.com Review
Good for Tomie dePaola! Few of us get to go back to childhood and explain just what in the
world we were thinking when we did things like
(a) licking a bedpost to see if it tasted like maple syrup (Tomie's mom told him his furniture was "genuine maple"),
(b) wearing lipstick and pretending to be Mae West, or
(c) refusing to go to the bathroom for days (Tomie was pretty distressed to have his mom trapped in the hospital after delivering his brand-new baby sister). But award-winning author-illustrator dePaola elaborates on all of this and more in a charming--and winningly evenhanded--tell-all memoir, recounted in an artfully convincing 5-year-old's voice.
The sequel to the 2000 Newbery Honor winner 26 Fairmount Avenue, Here We All Are has Tomie, his 9-year-old brother, Buddy, and Mom and Dad settling into the new house on Fairmount as Tomie continues kindergarten with Miss Immick. Part Linus Van Pelt, part Calvin (minus Hobbes), the budding performer Tomie proves to be as endearing--and sometimes aggravating--as you'd expect a 5-year-old to be. In this second installment of the 26 Fairmount series, Tomie enrolls in tap classes at Miss Leah's Dancing School, upstages Peter Rabbit in a school play while hamming it up as Flopsy, and faces off against his hilariously terrifying Italian grandmother, Nana Fall-River. (Ages 7 to 10) --Paul Hughes
From Publishers Weekly
DePaola continues to share engaging childhood memories in this breezy follow-up to 26 Fairmount Avenue, his inaugural chapter book and a Newbery Honor title. Opening with a chatty tour of their just-completed house, the five-year-old narrator recalls trying out his mother's vanity table ("One day when no one was around, I sat there and put on my mother's lipstick, pretending to be Miss Mae West") and trying to interpret his mother's statement that his new bedroom furniture was "genuine maple" ("When no one was looking, I licked the bedpost to see if it tasted like maple syrup"). The impish boy has some amusing run-ins with his kindergarten teacher, who makes the egregious mistake of passing him over for the title role in "Peter Rabbit," the class play; Tomie in retaliation hams it up and hogs the spotlight as Flopsy. But at the heart of this volume is the pending arrival of a sibling, whom the boy insists will be a baby sister "with a red ribbon in her hair"; fans of dePaola's picture books will recognize this scenario from The Baby Sister and appreciate the amplifications here. Cheerful black-and-white pictures convey Tomie's considerable spunk and help bring his likable family and friends into focus. The author's concluding wordsD"But more about all that later!"Dwill leave fans of all ages eager for the next installment of these lighthearted, anecdotal memoirs. Ages 7-11.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
