The Relatives Came

The relatives' station wagon: it smelled like a real car, looked like a rainbow, and was roomy enough for a crowd.

Lucky! Because a big crowd in all shapes and sizes piled into that old wagon at four o'clock one summer morning and piled out of it the next day at their relatives' place on the north side of the mountains. All in good moods.

The visitors settled in everywhere throughout the house, laughing and making music and hugging everyone from the kitchen to the front room. And they stayed for weeks.

Cynthia Rylant's words and Stephen Gammell's pictures take warm delight in the time the relatives came -- when two sides of a family made one roomy middle.

Kindergarten-Grade 3 The title of Rylant's exuberant tale is an understatement, for when "those relatives" came, they came en masse and they came for an extended stay. Their anticipation at seeing kin during their long, long drive and finally hugging them "against their wrinkled Virginia clothes" set the tone for this welcome family reunion, a visit that never wears thin. The relatives are depicted as a support system to help a fatherless family with all the things that need to be done in and around their house. In down-to-earth language that harbors strong emotion, Rylant recounts the festive celebration of the relatives' stayand the ensuing sadness when they depart. The relatives in question are a large rural brood, depicted, in Gammell's joyous color pencil drawings, as running the gamut from porcine to scrawny, old to young and rowdy to silent. In pictures of this group hugging, eating and sleeping, the unspoken closeness of the unnamed relatives can be felt. These softly colored pictures, which capture the spirit of the brief text, are large enough for sharing in groupsa use of this warm book that seems particularly appropriate. David Gale, "School Library Journal"
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