From School Library Journal
Grade 2-4?A century of life on the Chesapeake Bay is explored through this story of one family of oyster fishermen. Unfortunately, there is a choppy quality to the writing. Peopled with so many characters (four generations), the story line is also sometimes hard to follow. The focus of the narrative seems to be the decline in quality and size of the oyster beds, signaling the possible end of that industry here. This result of pollution and industrialization threatens the future of everyone living in this area, from the watermen to the shipwrights. The carefully executed and realistic watercolor illustrations are evocative of times past, but their static quality only serves to emphasize the lack of action in the story. Although this offering may be of interest to people in this section of the country or useful as an adjunct to environmental studies, it is unlikely to hold the attention of young listeners. Furthermore, the use of sailing and oystering terms and references to local customs might confuse those readers unfamiliar with them. Fictionalized memoirs of this type, like Jane Yolen's All Those Secrets of the World (Little, Brown, 1993) or Cynthia Rylant's When I Was Young in the Mountains (Dutton, 1982), written with feeling and poetic imagery, are more readable and engaging narratives. A marginal purchase for most libraries.?Martha Rosen, Edgewood School, Scarsdale,
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Ages 5-8. Annie's great-grandmother married a waterman and moved to Tilghman Island in Chesapeake Bay. So begins the quiet reflections of Annie as she vividly describes the joys, sorrows, hardships, and dreams that her relatives experienced from generation to generation as they made their living from the oyster and fish that lived in the bay. But as the narrative proceeds, the water becomes less hospitable to sea life, and so it is more difficult for the family to make their living from the water. The warm, homespun narrative is skillfully blended with lovely, soft-focused pictures by San Souci that capture the passage of time. A map of the story's setting appears on the back cover. Children will be fascinated by this look into an unusual slice of Americana, and teachers will find this a useful addition for ecological or genealogy units.
April Judge
