From School Library Journal:
Grade 2-5-- This book is a graphically strong and appealing work that illustrates paragraphs from Thoreau's Walden . Text and art span one year, starting with the construction of a house and continuing through winter to an early spring. The style of Sabuda's richly colored linoleum cuts is reminiscent of 19th-century woodcuts. Using a palette of deep green, blue, gold, and brown, he has created a rich forest in the midst of which Thoreau is shown as a sturdy, somewhat awkward man who varies work with contemplation. Given the restriction of the medium chosen, the illustrator achieves a wonderful luminosity in his skies and water and is successful in evoking the sense of solitude and calm Thoreau found at Walden. The book is not, of course, Walden as Thoreau intended it. The quotes selected are neither the most poetic nor the most original in the work, and they tend to emphasize the natural history aspect of Thoreau's experience. Nowhere is there any sense of his disillusionment with the materialism of society or his struggle to create a life independent of values that he felt were destructive. Today's heightened awareness of impending ecological disaster makes Thoreau a meaningful role model for children, but to present Walden without its biting edge is to create a sentimental and diminished view of one of America's most independent and original thinkers. --Eleanor K. MacDonald, Beverly Hills Public Library
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Publishers Weekly:
Shrinking Walden into picture book size is somewhat like trying to fit Moby Dick into an aquarium. Still, Lowe's selections from Thoreau's iconoclastic work will give children a brief taste of this classic. Using only quotations from the original work, Lowe tells the story of Thoreau's year in the woods, emphasizing his descriptions of nature,stet comma and action rather than his philosophical musings. Readers see the young Thoreau putting shingles on his roof, hoeing beans, welcoming a stranger; they can revel in the natural wonders he describes--the "whip-poor-wills," in summer, the drifting snow in winter, the ice breaking in the pond in spring. Sabuda's superb linoleum-cut prints lend a hard-edged brilliance to the dark woods--where sunlight is filtered through etched leaves, and moonlight shimmers on the waters of the pond made famous by a young man's experiment with life. All ages.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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