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| ALA Notable Books for Children |  | | The Last Peach
by Gus Gordon
School Library Journal PreS-Gr 2-In this picture book charmer, two insects spot a beautiful peach. They want to eat it, but a praying mantis announces that it is the last peach of the season. Another bug says it looks good, but it could be rotten inside. If they ate it, would they feel sick? The two main insects argue and debate, each one getting a different text font color to make the conversation parts clear. Is the peach magic? Should they share it with others? Perhaps write it an admiring poem? When they get into a physical fight over which one of them should claim it, they declare themselves unworthy, and then leave the peach alone. After they depart, the final image reveals a twist. The glowing orb they have been admiring is actually the sun, positioned so it appears to hang on a tree branch. The collage illustrations are made up of many different colors and types of paper that include words in French, while the end pages depict several varieties of peaches in a luscious photorealistic style. VERDICT Use with Du Iz Tak? and James and the Giant Peach to discuss conflict resolution or for a plant-themed storytime.-Lucinda Snyder Whitehurst, St. Christopher's School, -Richmond, VA © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. (c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. Kirkus Two motley insects contemplate eating the last peach of the season.Gordon presents children with a timeless, rather adult dilemma: how to act in the face of irresistible temptation. Here, two thumb-shaped flylike creaturesone dressed in a Homburg hat and blue-and-white-striped body suit, the other in a red print shirtencounter a sumptuous peach, rosy and golden as the setting sun, still on the branch, and begin to discuss its merits. "It's the most beautiful peach I've seen ALL summer," says the bug dressed in blue. "Wouldn't you agree?" "I do agree," responds the red-shirted friend: "In fact, it's the most beautiful peach I've seen in ALL the summers." The two quickly decide they "must eat that peach at once," but with one page turn, a venerable praying mantis, clad in top hat and cane, stops them, warning: "You can't eat that peach! It's the last peach of the season." In delightfully clever double-page spreads, the two friends then go back and forth, hilariously debating whether to devour the peach together or alone, to share it with others or to leave it entirely. Gordon's witty, collagelike mixed-media illustrations and spare, dialogue-only text not only get at the gnarly pit of indecisionserving up provocative behavioral binaries such as impulsivity versus reflection, indulgence versus sacrifice, hoarding versus sharingbut offer a surprise ending as well.Luscious, light, and thought-provoking: decidedly not to be missed! (Picture book. 3-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission. Publishers Weekly This existential meditation by Gordon (Herman and Rosie) deals with some big questions. Two wide-eyed insects contemplate a red-orange globe that hangs suspended amid green leaves. "Oh my," one exclaims. "Now THAT is a fine peach!" They begin the discussion agreeably enough ("Let's eat it. At once!"), but as others weigh in ("You can't eat that peach!"), attitudes shift to anxiety ("We would probably... get big tummy aches"), then to fantasy ("What if we ate it and could suddenly do magical things?") before spiraling into frank conflict: "''That is MY peach!' 'No, it's MY peach!''" Gordon composes leafy collage-style spreads in paper accented with snippets of vintage French type. The insects bear more than a passing resemblance to the clowns in Beckett's Waiting for Godot; one has a hat and a curling proboscis, while the other sports antennae and a red schnozz. In the wistful ending, the two friends decide that the object of their desire is too beautiful to eat, denying themselves the pleasure they've been anticipating all along. And after they leave, another surprise awaits readers. Some desires, this sly fable suggests, may be founded on illusion. Ages 4-8. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved Book list Do you dare to eat a peach? Certainly the endpapers of this book, which illustrate a variety of mouthwatering peaches, inspire one to do so. Two small, long-nosed insects contemplate the beauty of a particular peach (the very last one of the whole summer), which hangs on a tree above them. They decide they must eat it at once! But when a third green insect with top hat and cane arrives, he cries, Stop! You can't eat that peach! It's the last peach of the season. Hmm. Another tubby, winged character arrives, suggesting that the peach may be stinky and rotten on the inside. Ugh. Well, they could share the peach with all their friends . . . or one could keep it from the other and devour it. Suspense builds, and the magnificent peach remains hanging uneaten, to be admired for its beauty. Contrasting font colors make this a perfect read-aloud for more than one speaker. Collages of fragments of printed words in French, combined with artwork done in watercolor, crayon, and pencil, are surrounded by generous white space, which offsets the round, juicy, delectable peach and the somewhat wacky sartorial dress of the bug-eyed insects with humor and delight. The final surprise ending gives a subtle nod to the ephemeral nature of desire.--Lolly Gepson Copyright 2019 Booklist From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission. |
| Caldecott Medal Winners |  | | The Man Who Walked Between the Towers
by Mordicai Gerstein
Publishers Weekly
: This effectively spare, lyrical account chronicles Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between Manhattan's World Trade Center towers in 1974. Gerstein (What Charlie Heard) begins the book like a fairy tale, "Once there were two towers side by side. They were each a quarter of a mile high... The tallest buildings in New York City." The author casts the French aerialist and street performer as the hero: "A young man saw them rise into the sky.... He loved to walk and dance on a rope he tied between two trees." As the man makes his way across the rope from one tree to the other, the towers loom in the background. When Philippe gazes at the twin buildings, he looks "not at the towers but at the space between them.... What a wonderful place to stretch a rope; a wire on which to walk." Disguised as construction workers, he and a friend haul a 440-pound reel of cable and other materials onto the roof of the south tower. How Philippe and his pals hang the cable over the 140-feet distance is in itself a fascinating-and harrowing-story, charted in a series of vertical and horizontal ink and oil panels. An inventive foldout tracking Philippe's progress across the wire offers dizzying views of the city below; a turn of the page transforms readers' vantage point into a vertical view of the feat from street level. When police race to the top of one tower's roof, threatening arrest, Philippe moves back and forth between the towers ("As long as he stayed on the wire he was free"). Gerstein's dramatic paintings include some perspectives bound to take any reader's breath away. Truly affecting is the book's final painting of the imagined imprint of the towers, now existing "in memory"-linked by Philippe and his high wire. Ages 5-8. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions Inc. Terms
School Library Journal
: K-Gr 6-As this story opens, French funambulist Philippe Petit is dancing across a tightrope tied between two trees to the delight of the passersby in Lower Manhattan. Gerstein places him in the middle of a balancing act, framed by the two unfinished World Trade Center towers when the idea hits: "He looked not at the towers, but at the space between them and thought, what a wonderful place to stretch a rope-." On August 7, 1974, Petit and three friends, posing as construction workers, began their evening ascent from the elevators to the remaining stairs with a 440-pound cable and equipment, prepared to carry out their clever but dangerous scheme to secure the wire. The pacing of the narrative is as masterful as the placement and quality of the oil-and-ink paintings. The interplay of a single sentence or view with a sequence of thoughts or panels builds to a riveting climax. A small, framed close-up of Petit's foot on the wire yields to two three-page foldouts of the walk. One captures his progress from above, the other from the perspective of a pedestrian. The vertiginous views paint the New York skyline in twinkling starlight and at breathtaking sunrise. Gerstein captures his subject's incredible determination, profound skill, and sheer joy. The final scene depicts transparent, cloud-filled skyscrapers, a man in their midst. With its graceful majesty and mythic overtones, this unique and uplifting book is at once a portrait of a larger-than-life individual and a memorial to the towers and the lives associated with them.-Wendy Lukehart, Washington DC Public Library Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions Inc. Terms
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| Newbery Medal Winners |  | | The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman
Publishers Weekly
: Starred Review. A lavish middle-grade novel, Gaiman's first since Coraline, this gothic fantasy almost lives up to its extravagant advance billing. The opening is enthralling: There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. Evading the murderer who kills the rest of his family, a child roughly 18 months old climbs out of his crib, bumps his bottom down a steep stairway, walks out the open door and crosses the street into the cemetery opposite, where ghosts take him in. What mystery/horror/suspense reader could stop here, especially with Gaiman's talent for storytelling? The author riffs on the Jungle Book, folklore, nursery rhymes and history; he tosses in werewolves and hints at vampires—and he makes these figures seem like metaphors for transitions in childhood and youth. As the boy, called Nobody or Bod, grows up, the killer still stalking him, there are slack moments and some repetition—not enough to spoil a reader's pleasure, but noticeable all the same. When the chilling moments do come, they are as genuinely frightening as only Gaiman can make them, and redeem any shortcomings. Ages 10–up. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions Inc. Terms
School Library Journal
: Gr 5–8—Somewhere in contemporary Britain, "the man Jack" uses his razor-sharp knife to murder a family, but the youngest, a toddler, slips away. The boy ends up in a graveyard, where the ghostly inhabitants adopt him to keep him safe. Nobody Owens, so named because he "looks like nobody but himself," grows up among a multigenerational cast of characters from different historical periods that includes matronly Mistress Owens; ancient Roman Caius Pompeius; an opinionated young witch; a melodramatic hack poet; and Bod's beloved mentor and guardian, Silas, who is neither living nor dead and has secrets of his own. As he grows up, Bod has a series of adventures, both in and out of the graveyard, and the threat of the man Jack who continues to hunt for him is ever present. Bod's love for his graveyard family and vice versa provide the emotional center, amid suspense, spot-on humor, and delightful scene-setting. The child Bod's behavior is occasionally too precocious to be believed, and a series of puns on the name Jack render the villain a bit less frightening than he should be, though only momentarily. Aside from these small flaws, however, Gaiman has created a rich, surprising, and sometimes disturbing tale of dreams, ghouls, murderers, trickery, and family.—Megan Honig, New York Public Library Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions Inc. Terms
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| Oprah's Book Club |  | | One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Library Journal
: Two modern giants (LJ 2/15/70 and LJ 11/1/61, respectively) join Knopf's venerable "Everyman's Library." If you've been searching for quality hardcovers of these two eternally popular titles, look no further. Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions Inc. Terms
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