From: Johnson, Deidre <djohnson>
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 97 20:31:00 PST

I finally had a chance to see this Caldecott Honor Book tonight and confess I can't figure out why it merited even hororable mention. It seems nice, but not particularly memorable. The colors are drab, the characters seem generic, and the active baby subplot is hardly new. I'm obviously missing something here. Would someone who's been delighting in this book be willing to discuss what strengths s/he sees in the illustrations, what makes them so powerful/memorable/effective?

In the category of personal picks, I'm still sorry that Rosemary Wells's work on _My First Mother Goose_ wasn't honored by the committee. I think it's her finest work and that the pictures extend ideas in the rhymes wonderfully. (My particular favorite is the sequence accompanying Humpty Dumpty, where the final picture shows the bunny smiling delightedly now that the egg is gone; the elegant Babylonian illustration is another favorite.) The variety in the illustrations, themed approaches in the early sections, and ways of re-visioning the rhymes all seemed to be elements that deserved recognition.

Deidre Johnson djohnson at wcupa.edu
Received on Thu 27 Feb 1997 10:31:00 PM CST