Our Prairie Home: A Picture Album

Presents an ordinary day in the life of a colorful family living in a doll's house.

Grade 1 Up Wit and whimsy are second nature to Goffstein, and her latest book excels in both. The illustrations are photographs: the subjects are 2 wooden figures (carved by the artist 25 years ago) in a setting of miniature furnishings. But doll-house preciousness is not the aim: both the figures and their accessories have an ``American primitive'' look (curiously set off by the high-rise-like space of the box in which they're set). Children may point out that the unjointed family are not so lifelike as their surroundings, and they may well be perplexed by the air of suppressed drama in the allusive and vestigial ``plot.'' (The narrative style recalls Goreywithout the menace.) No matter: Goffstein's following is presumably attuned to subtlety, and will drink in all the details (like the wooden cat, ``Long John Silver,'' who has a straight pin replacing a broken-off leg). The incongruity between these stiff, toothpick-tall characters and the complex and poignant emotional life ascribed to them in the terse captions raises this book to the plane of personal philosophy mapped out in such Goffstein works as An Artist (1980) and School of Names (1986, both Harper). It should attract all lovers of the odd and idiosyncraticthough perhaps not very many children. Patricia Dooley, University of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Goffstein carved a set of miniature wooden dolls 26 years ago that have inspired many of her picture books. Now the dolls themselves take center stage, photographed against the muted interiors of a dollhouse, in a book that captures moments in a day in the life of a family: Lillian, her husband Bernard, their daughter Mildred and Lillian's sister, Alvina. Some of the photographs, such as Mildred gazing at herself in the mirror, dreaming of one day looking like her admired aunt, are evocative and work well with their accompanying captions. The photographs are artfully composed and filled with interesting artifacts that create the mood of a humble, bygone era; despite this, there is a static, austere quality to the book that a choppy text, focused on tensions between the sisters, fails to infuse with warmth. Goffstein's affection for her creations is apparent in this effort; one only wishes that she had managed to translate that caring into more accessible terms for readers. All ages.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.