Kindergarten-Grade 3-Shough has taken her own family history and created a picture book about mother-daughter love across eight generations. This "slice of time" opens with the author's own daughter and baby granddaughter whose modern world is tied together by computers. Each succeeding one-to-three page section introduces the previous generation of women and describes their lifestyle, going back to Rachel Drewey, who was born in Virginia in the 1760s. The brief vignettes are tied together with the refrain, "And this I know, I know for sure...(her) Mama held her, kissed her, loved her. Just as I love you." Muted drawings done in oil pastel and colored pencil provide the backdrop for the story. The book is for quiet and contemplative times and will best be used in one-on-one settings between parent (or grandparent) and child.
Roxanne Burg, Thousand Oaks Library, CA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Ages 5^-7. The timeless continuity of mother love receives an eloquent tribute with this debut, based on Shough's own family history. Although a story with no beginning or end, it starts with baby Madeleine being held, kissed, and loved by her mama, Jenni--just as Jenni was when she was a child and her mama, too, and so on back more than two centuries to Rachel's mother, whose name is lost, and all the generations preceding. Written in blank verse but printed as prose, the incantatory text reads with a strong, soothing rhythm; the spread-filling pastels have less finish but show Jenni and her mama, Carol, watching the moon landing on TV, Carol as a child "helping" her mother maintain a Victory Garden, their ancestors watching redcoats march past, and a parade of mothers and children in a final historical montage, all depicted in ways that show love without oversentimentalizing it. Shough identifies each era with references to large, well-known events; for thought-provoking counterpoint, match this with Betsy Hearne's 1997 Booklist Editors' Choice Seven Brave Women, a similar commemoration in which history is not anchored to war or politics. John Peters
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