From Publishers Weekly
Light emanates gracefully from Widener's (Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man) pleasing, stylized acrylic paintings, which inventively capture the dual settings of Jones's (Between Black Women) folksy tale and give dimension to its abundant, occasionally heavy-handed imagery. The narrative moves, a little choppily at first, between a shadow-filled city street, where Noni and her grandfather take a nighttime walk, and the Alabama countryside, where her grandfather grew up. Gazing at the moon, Grandaddy says it reminds him of "down home." Noni knows a story is coming, and one does. Lost on a dark night, GrandaddyAthen a young manApasses by a church and hears the choir rehearsing. At first the singers "sound like rocks hitting a rusty can," but then a soloist's voice rings out, "low and deep, and full, just like a brook in the Alabama woods." Captivated, he waits to meet the soloist, and straightaway knows she is the woman he will marry. After he walks her home, her tambourine jumps out of his hands and settles in the sky, "glowing and pouring light all over the night like butter running down the sides of a hot biscuit." For youngsters frightened of the dark, the book sheds some comforting light, but the densely metaphorical prose may make it hard to appreciate the image of the "tambourine moon" at this book's center. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Grade 1-3-A young African-American girl is frightened as she and her grandfather walk down a city street one evening, and Grandaddy comforts her by telling her of another dark night "down home" in rural Alabama. He recounts the night he met her Grandma Ismay and escorted her home from choir practice. On his way home, he realized that he still had Ismay's tambourine in his hand and after a while, he was shaking so hard that the round golden object shot right out of his hand, up into the sky, and became the full, yellow Alabama moon. The language is simple and strong, making use of similes and folk expressions to convey the loneliness of the empty city streets and the countryside on a moonless night. The richly colored acrylic paintings utilize golden yellow-the same yellow used for the tambourine and for the moon-as a visual counterpoint to the blue/black of the streets and countryside. The text appears on pages of the same golden yellow, sometimes with inset small pictures set opposite the pages of illustration. The loneliness and isolation of the scenery is beautifully evoked; the grandparents are also well portrayed in a stylized manner that is perfectly suited to the story. This title is best used for one-on-one sharing, at bedtime or any time.
Marian Drabkin, Richmond Public Library, CA Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
