The Magic Cornfield - Hardcover

Willard, Nancy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0152014284 ISBN 13: 9780152014285

Publisher: Harcourt Brace, 1997

Synopsis

Getting lost on his way to his cousin Bottom's 100th birthday celebration, Tottem finds himself in a Magic Cornfield that transports him to many unusual places, from which he sends Bottom postcard descriptions of his experiences.

About this title

About the Author

Nancy Willard (born June 26, 1936) is a novelist, a poet, and a children's writer and occasional illustrator. Her 1981 collection of poems, A Visit to William Blake's Inn, won the Newbery Medal as that year's most distinguished contribution to American children's literature.

Willard was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she later received the B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and won five Hopwood Awards for creative writing. She also studied at Stanford University, where she received her M.A.

Reviews

Grade 1-3?Bottom, a rag doll with an ass's head (like his Shakespearean namesake), invites his cousin Tottem to celebrate his 100th birthday in Minneapolis. Tottem sets out from New York, but his car gives out after two hours and he walks into a magic cornfield looking for help. He finds a "Traveling Mailbox" and a sign promising that all messages will be transferred onto postcards and delivered. Thus the conceit: Tottem's travels through the fantasy world of the cornfield are chronicled by the mailbox's postcards. Each double-page spread has a hand-lettered message placed opposite the full-color photo on the front of the postcard. The textual content (e.g., a reference to a duck the doll meets along the way) determines the stamps and point of origin of the card (stamps of mallards, Audubon, St. Francis, and cancellation from Bird-in-Hand, PA). Collages, posed dolls, and odd assemblages inventively connect the picture to the words in the text. Tottem remains trapped in the corn, it is later revealed, because he believes in magic. He misses Bottom's birthday, but an obliging angel flies him to the edge of the field about four months later. Adult readers will be amused and/or puzzled by the clever connections that promise a meaning not explicitly delivered. Children who demand that their stories make sense will be in for some frustration.?Patricia Lothrop-Green, St. George's School, Newport, RI
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Willard (The Good-Night Blessing Book, 1996, etc.), in something of a creative risk, combines assemblages of US postage stamps with photographed tableaux of dolls, angels, and ``sculptures and other oddities'' (according to the copyright page) to illustrate this epistolary tale of a wildly errant traveler. When his car breaks down, Tottem Perhaps wanders into a trackless cornfield, precipitating a series of odd adventures and encounters--all of which he reports to his cousin Bottom on hand- written, appropriately stamped-and-canceled post cards. Eventually arrested in ``Hat Creek, CA'' for not wearing a hat, and jailed in ``Truth Or Consequences, NM,'' Tottem floats to ``Wise River, MT,'' then passes through other actual towns before finding the cornfield's edge at last near ``Happy, TX.'' Sharp-eyed readers will chuckle over the Ethel Waters stamp among the Wise River note's waterfowl, Babe Ruth and a fishing fly called ``Lefty's Deceiver'' used to post the card from ``Left Hand, WV,'' and a squad of smiling faces from Happy. This witty travelogue makes a natural companion to Vera B. Williams's Stringbean's Trip to the Shining Sea (1988). (Picture book. 6-8) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harcourt Brace
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0152014284
• ISBN 13: 9780152014285
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 48