Come a Tide - Hardcover

Lyon, George Ella

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0531058549 ISBN 13: 9780531058541

Publisher: Orchard Books, 1990

Synopsis

A girl provides a lighthearted account of the spring floods at her rural home.

About this title

From School Library Journal

PreS Grade 2 --In the hills, in March, it snowed and then rained four days and nights. Grandma said, "It'll come a tide." It did, washing away gardens, porches, pigs, and chickens. Four families on a hillside cope with the flood, driving to higher ground to wait it out, fetching their boat, and gathering stray family members. After the narrator's night at Grandma's, the rain stops and they all return to "make friends with a shovel." The story is lyrically told with sly humor, and expanded to hilarity by Gammell's rollicking, wet, full-of-action, full-color cartoons. The characters could get together with those he did for Rylant's The Relatives Came (Bradbury, 1985). The underlying colored-pencil technique is in his typical style, but for rain he uses watercolor. His work is jolly as always and brimming with life, but there is one small nit to pick: the chickens and the pigs smile as the water sweeps them away. The jovial art may also tend somewhat to counter the final lines of the book: ". . . I'll hold my breath/ and hope Grandma won't say,/ 'Children, it'll come a tide.' " That is quibbling, however. Children and adults alike will love this big-hearted book. Reassuringly, it shows feisty people coping with trouble and coming out all right, thus taking some of the fear out of a potentially terrifying experience. --Helen Gregory, Grosse Pointe Public Library, MI
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly

Four days and nights of rain and snow in the mountains and, Grandma predicts, it'll "come a tide." And indeed, fragile gardens are swept away, pigs and chickens float merrily by, and families scramble for higher ground. When the water recedes, everyone pitches in, excavating household goods--their "buried treasures"--with good cheer. This is a gem of a picture book, a seamless collaboration between author and artist. Lyon's folksy narrative captures the cadence of country speech without striking a false or condescending note. And Gammell memorably renders the strength and individuality of mountain folk. Using drips and splotches of watercolors as well as drawing more traditional, slanting rain, he brings the reader into the storm, making it seem as though it has rained on the book itself. One feels buoyed by the characters' matter-of-fact resilience; this is a striking and thoroughly captivating portrait of grace and humor, in the face of adversity. Ages 4-7.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Orchard Books
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0531058549
• ISBN 13: 9780531058541
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Gammell Stephen