Grade 1-3-Three short stories about exuberant, irrepressible George. Every school has children and situations similar to those described here, so readers will relate to each episode. In the first, a classroom rabbit escapes from its cage and runs wild until George comes to the rescue. The second chapter is about making bread on project day. The third describes the difficulty he has about deciding how to spend his limited funds at the school fair. When he tries to figure the angles for winning the raffle for two box seats at a baseball game and doesn't succeed, he looks on the bright side, hoping to do better next year. George's character traits are unusually well developed in spite of the spare vocabulary. His positive spirit and good sportsmanship shine through even when things don't go his way. Young readers will be drawn into the familiar activities and will be encouraged to follow George's example in their own group activities. Simple, colorful cartoons add to the humor. The stories will satisfy the desire of early readers to reach the "chapter book" status. A good choice for independent reading or as a read-aloud.
Betty Teague, Blythe Academy of Languages, Greenville, SC
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

PLB 0-531-33190-3 A bland take on a worthy theme: when an aging farmer suddenly decides that he'd like to add reading to his many other skills, he washes up and presents himself at the one-room schoolhouse. Unperturbed, the teacher points to an empty seat, and after an unspecified time of practice, both alone and with classmates, the man brings home a book of poetry to read to his wife. Placing their grizzled subject against peaceful rustic backgrounds, Fernandez and Jacobson give him a heroic look through low angles of view, and show him last bringing his wife, a new convert to the pleasures of literacy, to school. Adult new readers may respond to this, but next to stories such as Eve Bunting's The Wednesday Surprise (1989) and Marie Bradley's More Than Anything Else (1995), children will gain little sense here of the importance, benefits, or process of learning to read. (Picture book. 6-8) -- Copyright �1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Jeremiah, a vital, elderly farmer, is featured in this idealized book about illiteracy. Jeremiah knows how to build a split-rail fence and make buttermilk pancakes, but he doesn't know how to read. A teacher in a one-room schoolhouse and her students help him, and in gratitude Jeremiah teaches the children "how to chirp like a chickadee and honk like a goose." In some ways, the strengths of the book are also its weaknesses. The lyrical text is beautifully written, but its economy sometimes leads to confusion. For instance, it's initially unclear why Jeremiah's wife and brother don't teach him how to read (they are also illiterate). The spacious, realistically rendered oil paintings emphasize the heroism of the protagonist. But the choice of an earlier era for the setting incorrectly suggests that illiteracy is a problem of the past (the publisher's note, however, does state that this is not the case). Most important, perhaps, neither the art nor the text shows the struggle involved in learning to read. Despite its shortcomings, this upbeat presentation has myriad uses for ESL and adult-literacy classes as well as elementary-grade discussion groups. Julie Corsaro

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