From School Library Journal
Grade 1–4—As this heartwarming picture book opens, Ma's headed out to work the night shift and narrator Jack notes, "lately it seems like she's got nothin' left over, not even for us kids." His older sister, Maybelle, has watched the harvest in their neighbor Mr. Kenney's fields, and, that night, she leads Jack and their younger brother, Eddie, to glean the potatoes left behind. The siblings bundle up in layers of clothing, tuck Eddie into their red wagon, and head out into the cold autumn night. Spurred on by thoughts of a tater feast, they toil in the moonlight and trudge home only to find that they've harvested mostly stones. An angry Ma forces them to confess to Mr. Kenney the next day, but he laughs aside their apology, noting that they've done him a favor by removing the stones from his fields. The children go home and tell Ma, she cooks a fry-up with a sweet smile, and Jack realizes that her love is big enough to "turn even three little spuds like us into something mighty fine." This beautifully crafted picture book features panoramic landscapes and intimate pictures. Watson's pencil, ink, watercolor, and gouache illustrations, warmly rendered in earth tones, capture the small figures trudging along under a huge full moon, and detail the care the older children lavish on their younger brother. This sweetly understated affirmation of hard work and honesty, neighborliness and family love, will resonate with a wide audience.—
Marilyn Taniguchi, Beverly Hills Public Library, CA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
*Starred Review* The creators of The Cats in Krasinski Square (2004), about children who resisted Nazi occupation in Warsaw, move to a very different setting in this title that also features young people on a secret mission. Here, though, the children are a trio of siblings who yearn for a hearty meal and relief for their overworked mother. Watson’s quiet, earth-toned images, rendered in pencil, ink, watercolor, and gouache, set the story in the past (Ma uses a wood-burning cookstove) and in a poor, rural setting, where the kids hatch a plan to steal potatoes from a farmer’s field after his harvest. In folksy free verse, Jack, the middle child, describes the nighttime adventure, which ends with the children’s discovery that they’ve filled their sacks mostly with stones, not spuds. Even more heartbreaking is Ma’s anger, and she sends the children and their pilfered loot back to the farmer, who lets them keep what potatoes they found. The subtlety in Hesse’s spare, regional poetry is beautifully extended in Watson’s uncluttered pictures, which convey the thrilling, frosty, moonlit adventure and then the glowing warmth of the family’s shared meal at the end. Children will easily recognize all of the feelings here: the kids’ desire to help, the anxiety about right and wrong, and then the joy when all is forgiven. Preschool-Grade 2. --Gillian Engberg
