Reunion

While looking at a box of faded old photographs at his grandmother's summer cottage, Jon finds he has become part of the pictures

While Jon's grandmother naps, she leaves him to look at an old photo album entitled Paul's Fantastic Photos--1915. Bored, Jon finds the pictures ``gloomy''; even after he hears Paul's voice calling from a framed photo of him, climbs into it, and joins the boy in the earlier time, Jon sees everything there as gray. Paul, however, knows that ``Pictures can come to life,'' though ``it takes a little practice.'' The two visit several more scenes from the album before Jon, now convinced, makes a dive that lands him back in the full-color, but no more lively, present. A quiet story, but one that many young readers will find intriguing. Essley's appealingly nostalgic illustrations are distinguished by delicate modeling and carefully balanced composition. A creative introduction to time travel--and to the way that ordinary-seeming remnants of the past can become windows into a once-vibrant time. (Picture book/Young reader. 5-9) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Ages 5-8. Paging through an old family album, Jon falls into the world of its photographs and meets his great-grandfather as a boy back in 1915. Jon works and plays in that past time, and then he returns to his grandmother's summer cottage in the present day. It's an old idea, but Essley's pastel and cont{‚}e crayon illustrations--full color for the present, duotone for the past--show how Jon becomes part of the old gray pictures, how he finds vitality and stories in what had seemed dull and gloomy. Kids who like to pore over their family photographs will understand how pictures hold secrets that can come to life if you look hard. Hazel Rochman