Plowie: A Story from the Prairie

Kirkpatrick, Patricia

ISBN 10: 0152628029 ISBN 13: 9780152628024

Publisher: Harcourt Childrens Books, 1994

Synopsis

While helping plow, a young girl on the Iowa prairie finds a porcelain doll that becomes her best friend and, eventually, a family legacy passed down through generations.

About this title

From School Library Journal:

PreSchool-Grade 3-A homespun bit of family history has been recorded by this author and illustrator. The title character is a china doll, discovered by a long-ago grandmother when the prairie sod is plowed, hence the name. Though the explanation that some pioneer child must have lost it during her journey across the prairie 50 years before is posited, the doll's strange emergence from the soil is not to be so easily explained away. It becomes one of the girl's treasured possessions, and the narrative follows as Plowie is passed on through generations in a small bed made from a simple box and clothing made from gingham scraps. It is clear that the doll is important to the teller, but the story is insignificant. Unfortunately, the illustrations don't help much. With a primitive style recalling Grandma Moses, the flat, opaque watercolors have none of the charm but all of the amateurishness of the folk artist. The figures are awkwardly posed, their features and outlines blurry and indistinct. The doll does not become lovable, but remains an odd little detail in the pictures, eerily luminescent, frontally nude until clothes are made for her, and sometimes so small that she gets lost as the focal point of an illustration. This may be a meaningful tale for the Kirkpatrick family, but it does not translate well for the rest of us.
Ruth K. MacDonald, Bay Path College, Longmeadow, MA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A porcelain doll unearthed by her father's plow becomes a small girl's constant companion and, later, an heirloom in this true family story. Writing in a quietly matter-of-fact tone, Kirkpatrick (a poet) describes the girl's peaceful life on a turn- of-the-century Iowa farm and her discovery of the mysterious doll that goes with her as she grows up, moves into town, tells its story to her children and grandchildren, and passes it on at last. The illustrations, done by the author's sister in a flowing, naive style, focus attention on the farmyard in different seasons and on small domestic details: shelves of mason jars, kitchen and barn implements, calico and wallpaper patterns. The tiny figurine doesn't appear until halfway through, its origin never does come to light, and, remaining unclothed until near the end, it has a pagan look. The doll is a symbol of the theme that stories connect a family to its past. A simply presented but multilayered tale. (Nonfiction/Picture book. 5-9) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harcourt Childrens Books
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0152628029
• ISBN 13: 9780152628024
• Binding: Library Binding
• Edition number: 1
• Illustrator: Kirkpatrick Joey