The Tale I Told Sasha

When a yellow ball goes rolling away from its owner, it travels to a fantastic world where all lost things find a home, in a boldly illustrated book for young readers.

Kindergarten-Grade 3This picture book is a paean to a childs imagination. A young girl follows her mothers gift of a yellow ball through the face of a mantel clock into a world where winged travelers must walk./All those with wheels get to ride. Logic and sequence are forgotten in this lyrical journey where a door opens softly as an egg to reveal a farmer planting the yellow ball for a harvest of golden things. Lost objects are founda dropped needle and a card, pennies and puzzle pieces, and the stars and sheep/my mother counts to fall asleep. Finally, a steamship sails into view on a painted sea, manned by the farmer, now the King of Keys, who tosses the yellow ball back into the reality of the childs home. The books title suggests its origin as a piece written by Willard for her daughter, and the lyrical, cadenced sound of her poetry may bring pleasure. However, the fantasy moves through a series of images like a stream of consciousness without meaning or logic. Christianas dreamy, full-page watercolor illustrations reflect the kaleidoscopic images of the poem and appeal to the eye, but the book will be difficult for most readers.Shirley Wilton, Ocean County College, Toms River, NJ
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

With this imaginary journey, Willard (Step Lightly, 1998, etc.) turns away from the self-indulgence of her recent work towards the vision and beguiling language of A Visit to William Blake's Inn (1981). When a door opens in the shadows of her ``plain and small'' living room, a latter-day Alice chases a golden ball through ``an older space/ . . . over the Bridge of Butterflies,/across the Field of Lesser Beasts,'' and into more magic realms. Christiana observes and expands on the hint of the psychedelic that runs through the incantatory text; the underside of a bed becomes a wide space through which fly the ``snails and numbers, stars and sheep/my mother counts to fall asleep,'' while elsewhere great half-seen constructions and familiar creatures made marvelous blend into shimmering backgrounds. Guided home in the end by a mysterious King of Keys, the young traveler offers readers a key of her own: ``A hundred pencils, swift as rain,/writing on sheets of beaten gold/would not be quick enough to hold/the strange adventures/shadows hold.'' Bon voyage. (Picture book. 7-10) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Sasha's mom--with a gnome resting comfortably in her overalls pocket and her long hair pinned up by a pen and brush--gives Sasha a yellow ball on a wet, dull day. It bounces through the door in the mantel clock's shadow and over a bridge of butterflies, and Sasha follows. There, dreamlike images abound: Sasha finds a farmer had planted her ball in hopes that it might grow "flowers gold as finch's wings . . . a golden hen . . . and starlight-covered jelly beans." In this mysterious realm, Sasha finds all manner of hidden "things worn or wished on, old or lost." The farmer, who is the King of Keys, eventually gives her back her yellow ball, and she finds herself back in her own living room. Her house may be "small and plain," but a hundred pencils writing on sheets of gold could not hold "the strange adventures / shadows hide." The watercolor and pastel illustrations are spun of the same ineffably charming stuff as those Christiana did for his White Nineteens (1992); Willard's verse seems hewn out of the very rock of imagination. The whole glistens with silken enchantment, like Berlie Doherty's The Midnight Man (, Jennifer Armstrong's Pockets (1998), and Brown's Mad Summer Night's Dream, which is also reviewed in this issue. The pages draw the attention again and again, as connections between the poem and the pictures insinuate themselves and the perspectives shimmer and re-form. Even the title page offers magic, as a die-cut circle shows Sasha peering through on one side, and the golden endpapers, the color of the yellow ball, on the other. GraceAnne A. DeCandido