From School Library Journal
Grade 1-6-A mysterious woman appears, blown onto the prairie outside a workaday village. She is clearly too exotic for these folks' simple way of life, but agrees to sew them plain clothing to earn her keep. After some time, however, she begins to embroider the insides of their pockets, so that when they stuff their hands into the pockets they are disturbed by wild thoughts and powerful emotions. As they give way, or give free rein, to the dreams the seamstress has stimulated, the villagers crave color and poetry and music. Their homes and habits are transformed and the woman, herself fulfilled, turns homeward. This is an enchanting allegory, told in language that is simultaneously luscious and wry. Readers can forgive the occasional excessiveness of Armstrong's lists ("...of fabrics she knew bengaline, brabent, abbott cloth, sarcenet, batiste, and armozeen") because it seems to stem from an overwhelming exuberance. GrandPre's richly detailed, undulant paintings match the words tone for tone and joy for joy. Not everyone will love this somewhat sophisticated story, but those who do will love it to pieces.
Miriam Lang Budin, Mt. Kisco Public Library, NYCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Ages 5^-8, older for reading alone. Armstrong and GrandPre top the stylishness of their
Chin Yu Min and the Ginger Cat (1993) in this grand, lyrical tale of imagination's transformative power. The story is framed in nautical imagery and metaphor. When "a slim schooner of a woman, driven by strong winds and a broken heart," fetches up outside a prairie town, the industrious residents take her in as their tailor, on the condition that she make only practical, unornamented clothing. She agrees--but in subtle rebellion begins lining pockets with glorious embroidery of ships and fish, shells, and mementos of exotic ports of call. Soon the townsfolk are learning the names of stars, discussing poetry, dreaming of Constantinople, and, hands in pockets, scanning the far horizons. In GrandPre 's rolling, expressionistic painted scenes, the dusky purple light that falls on dreary buildings and shadowed faces is deepened and enriched by the golden visions that swirl about people's shoulders and fill the sky. In the end, heart healed, the mysterious woman sails off alone through seas of grass, having worked a profound change through hidden means. Like Armstrong's
Dreams of Mairhe Mehan (1996), this picture book will need help to find its audience, but the quality of the writing, plus fine contrapuntal interplay between text and pictures, will make the effort well worthwhile.
John Peters
