Synopsis
Enhanced with colorful artwork, this poetry collection captures the joys, struggles, triumphs, and humor of the special relationship between mother and child.
Reviews
Grade 4-6-Like the presence of a mother's hand, Wong's thoughtful and reflective volume is comforting and easily accessible. The poems are solid and steady reminders of the connections between mothers and children. In the brief lines, which are boldly paired with Hewitson's striking and colorful scratchboard illustrations, children see only glimpses of life, but meaningful ones. A daughter notices, and loves, her mother's white hairs that "...grow back like daisies/poking through dark mulch." A mother cradles her child with "...her fingers curved/like a rainbow." In "Mother's Day," a boy gives his mother a hastily wrapped rock as a gift, and the caring woman immediately finds a purpose for it. Upon hearing her mother say, "When I was ten...," a girl wonders, "When she was ten, could she have been/such an amazing freak?" Universal love, discipline, strength, and emotion are all in evidence here.
Sharon Korbeck, Waupaca Area Public Library, WI
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
In an exquisite and moving collection of poetry, Wong (A Suitcase of Seaweed, 1996, etc.) explores the myriad emotions connected to the word and image of ``mother.'' Eighteen poems run the gamut of experience, from childhood adoration, to adolescent exasperation, to the wisdom and respect of adulthood. The poems sometimes reflect the child's voice, as in the humorous mealtime lament, ``Meat Loaf Again, Mother?''; other times it is the voice of the mother, asking, for example, for the strength, courage, and hope to guide her child through life: ``I will need the softness of a deer,/to nudge my child down the right path.'' Hewitson's expressive illustrations resonate with the shimmying lines of scratchboard; extrapolating simple imagery from the poems, she creates a visual synopsis of their message. A contemplation and celebration of the complexities of motherhood, this is in some ways more of a gift book for children to read with adults than for undertaking on their own. (Poetry. 8-11) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Gr. 5^-8, younger for reading aloud. These 18 short poems are limpid reflections on mother and child, some from the mother's point of view, some from the child's. All of them hold a kernel of truth that readers of all ages will recognize. A child walking "In Mother's Shadow" delights that she stops to rest "the very moment / my shoes grow / heavy." In another, a child compares plucking her mother's white hairs at her mother's request to plucking daisies. A tiny poem compares mother to an onion: golden, good for you, sometimes surprising in sweetness, or making you cry. A mother breathing slowly in sync with her infant or shielding her baby's eyes with "fingers curved / like a rainbow" are poems lovely in their simplicity. Jennifer Hewitson's illustrations are both sweet and powerful--strong scratchboard lines with pastel washes that make arresting images. The mother and child in "Smother Love" are a sculptural single shape; in the "Rainbow Hand" image, the lines of the mother's and baby's faces and the curves of the mother's hands echo the rhythm of the poem. Children from tots to teens, and beyond, will find their own tangled feelings here. GraceAnne A. DeCandido
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