One Hole in the Road [Hardcover]

W. Nikola-Lisa (Author), Dan Yaccarino (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 3 and up

"A single hole in the road causes considerable commotion in this clever counting book.... The energy of Yaccarino’s retro images matches the rhythm of the text, as flagmen wave, stoplights flash, and storefronts flood, oh my!" --Booklist

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

On the jacket of this vigorous counting book, and on the safety barricades painted inside, diagonal yellow-and-black stripes signal that men and women are working. The titular "one hole in the road" is a lollapalooza, requiring no fewer than "Four stoplights flashing,/ Five sirens blaring,/ Six worried engineers huddling nearby." Construction crews carrying shovels and wrenches rush to stop "eight water pipes gushing" and "nine storefronts flooding, Oh, my!" With just a few choice words, Nikola-Lisa (Being with You This Way) enables readers to imagine the clattering noise and busy site. Yaccarino (If I Had a Robot) focuses on the eye-catching hues of a red, gold and green stoplight or a pumpkin-orange jumpsuit; his natural-beige background and stripped-down, blocky people, cars and buildings resemble the stencil-like style of Michael Bartalos's Shadowville. Although text and images are orderly and direct, they nonetheless convey a disorderly city scene, full of punchy color and determined workers leaping to and fro. Ages 4-7.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

PreS?A counting book with a minimal, singsong text?"One hole in the road, Two flagmen waving, Three sturdy barricades warning passersby"?that traces city workers' attempts to repair a hole in the road. The illustrations are done in a simple cartoon style with subdued colors on acid-free paper. Multicultural workers of both sexes scurry throughout the pages with their wrenches and shovels in hand, to no avail. At the end, 10 of them look down into a hole that's just as big as it was before. The layout is spacious and each double-page spread is well balanced in its design. The orange-and-black stripes of the barricades decorate the back cover?a nice touch. Sure to be popular with toddlers.?Judith Constantinides, East Baton Rouge Parish Main Library, LA
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 3 and up
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) (September 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805042857
• ISBN-13: 978-0805042856
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,170,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

W. Nikola-Lisa's interest in writing books for children began as an elementary school teacher. He is the author of numerous picture books, including the award-winning Bein' With You This Way (Lee & Low), Shake Dem Halloween Bones (Houghton Mifflin), The Year With Grandma Moses (Henry Holt), Setting the Turkeys Free (Hyperion), and How We Are Smart (Lee & Low), a Christopher Award recipient. An accomplished storyteller and musician, Mr. Nikola-Lisa enjoys sharing his writing experiences with audiences--young and old--whenever possible. For more information about Mr. Nikola-Lisa go to www.nikolabooks.com or visit his storytelling blog at nikolabooks.blogspot.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My son's favorite book, March 23, 2001

By 

The Sullivans (Evanston, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: One Hole in the Road (Hardcover)

My 2 1/2 year old son loves this book. The pictures are colorful, and tell a great story. It is one of those books that is simple, yet filled with action - easy to animate as you read it and look at the pictures.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An artist shapes up, June 25, 2000

By 

Cynthia Birrer - See all my reviews

This review is from: One Hole in the Road (Hardcover)

Trying to fix a small pothole is apparently no easy task. Nor, according to Dan Yaccarino, was illustrating this book. He regards it as a turning point in the way he approaches his work which includes creating images for magazines, newspapers and ad campaigns in the United States and around the world. However, as Julie Cummins points out in Children's Book Illustration and Design (II), his free-wheeling and light hearted illustrations are natural for children's books, and in 1992 he wrote and illustrated his first picture book, Big Brother Mike. Using gouache on water color paper, Yaccarino shows us what its like to be the younger sibling and the trials and tribulations of being 'the baby'. But he also hoped to show all the good things that go along with having an older brother (also called Mike) and he succeeded!

A comparison of the style Yaccarino used to make these points, and later to capture the rhythmic sounds and shapes of demolition in BamBamBam, with that emerging in Circle Dogs and achieving maturity in Deep in the Jungle, reveals the extent to which this picture book is, indeed, a 'turning point':

"It took great pains for me to pare the illustrations down to their most essential elements: shape and colour. What appears to be the simplest of images is the result of much deliberation and discarded illustrations."

One hole in the road is an early result of an artist's struggle to derive form from the pure shapes of very generic visual concepts. Recognition that young children do this naturally in their own drawings is reflected in Johnathan Fineberg's fascinating exploration of the subject. In each case, people are reduced to the alternative of frontality and profile which provides the most informative sight for each single person or object -- four spotlights flashing, five sirens blaring. Young childlren understand these translations from model to picture and recognise an artist's image as an equivalent of the former created within the condition of the medium, in this picture book, paint.

Increasingly, Yaccarino's art captures the two most important features of the kind of art that appeals to young children: on the one hand, freedom from dependence on the shapes of nature; on the other, the basic shapes and colours whereby things are visually understood. These include the geometric primaries and black, white, reds, blues and yellows from which the world composes itself.

These results are not achieved by many pcture book artists, and not easily as Yaccarino makes clear in his account of the process recorded by Jill Bosset in Children's Book Illustration: Step by step technique - a unique guide to the masters.