Broken Umbrellas

A woman who spends her time picking up all sorts of things on the streets didn't always live this way

Grade 2-5-The story of a street person, told in concise prose-who she is, where she came from, and her gradual decline as she became dysfunctional. Never addressing the fact that this is a disturbed person, Spohn matter-of-factly describes the woman's childhood in poverty, the intelligence and curiosity that led her to become a university professor, and the eccentricities that later led her to become a street picker of, among other things, broken umbrellas, and to sleep on the roof or in the hall rather than in her apartment. The text, which is spare and dominated by lots of white space, is faced by full-page oil paintings. Spohn's art is as abstract and as simple as her text, and will be both unclear and uninteresting to the young audience that will be drawn to the book. Faceless people and undefined backgrounds do little to hold children's attention. Older readers may relate more to the topic, but the slight treatment may leave them more confused than enlightened.
Dot Minzer, North Barrington School, Barrington, IL
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This graceful book describes the life of a homeless woman, a "street picker," who is "always there, collecting things that have been thrown away." Spohn (Christmas at Anna's) outlines the girl's childhood in an unnamed foreign country; her aptitude for school ("she was extremely intelligent and very curious"); her career teaching at a university. There are hints of mental illness (she begins to hoard things, has strange dreams, talks to herself). At present the woman spends her days watering plants; feeding stray cats and pigeons; rummaging through garbage for treasures, for food, for her favorites-broken umbrellas. Spohn's text neither judges nor explains; it does not attempt to justify nor does it sensationalize. Instead, its quiet strength illuminates the heroine's character, with sadness but without pity. Likewise, her paintings guide through their emotional content; they are like days when the sun is about to break through, shrouded in mist and dappled with inner light. She communicates through feeling rather than substance, and some of her paintings may be difficult for a child to grasp. Overall, however, there is such a pleasing sense of poetry, of vision to this book that it is sure to leave a lasting impression. Ages 3-8.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A gem of a book about the gradual transformation of an intelligent professor into an intelligent homeless woman. In Spohn's (Ruth's Bake Shop, 1990) hands the transformation is as natural as a change of season. The woman once lived where ``it was warm and where herons stood and where pastel shells lay on the beach.'' Once, she ``liked wearing stylish clothes and owning lovely things.'' After a while, however, she wanders off in what we begin to see is a simple and quite purposeful search: to locate more of the lovely things of the world--``newspapers, books, ladders with missing rungs, bicycle wheels, single shoes, bottle tops,'' and broken black umbrellas, her favorites, which ``resemble the bats that are supposed to bring good luck.'' The warm oil- paintings are luminous with the strange complacency of a woman who's simply chosen to become a part of, rather than remain a bystander in, a world of beautiful things. Spohn clearly wants to take away the reflexive fear of homeless people from little kids (``You may cross over to avoid her smell. Or you may stop and listen to what she has to say''). It's an iffy proposition. Spohn completely skirts the issue of how miserable it is to be homeless, and parents probably don't want their children to pal around with such peculiar strangers. But there's an elemental lesson in humanity here. (Fiction/Picture book. 3-8) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Ages 5-8. Whether children live in small towns or large cities, they are probably familiar with the sort of woman Spohn describes: "She is always there, collecting things that have been thrown away. You may cross over to avoid her smell. Or you may stop and listen to what she has to say." As a child, before she came to America, the woman used to go places with her father, and she always stopped to help injured birds. When she grew up she taught at a university and liked pretty things. Somehow, though, her life changed, and she became worried about money, so she hid things, and then began picking up odds and ends and saving them. Her favorite things to put in her shopping cart are broken umbrellas. She likes seeing clouds because they mean it will soon be a good broken-umbrella day. Using impressionistic paintings and just the right words, this takes children behind the scenes of an individual street person's life. The evocative oil paintings, which rely on shapes and splashes of color, work particularly well, and suit a story in which children must intuit the homeless woman's life rather than actually understand it. A spare, sensitive offering that can spark discussion or contemplation. Ilene Cooper