From: Nicholas Glass <nglass>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 19:42:36 -0600

I love the text of Pete's A Pizza more than most children's books. I'm delighted to see that it received one of the Zolotow honor awards.

I recently read this book to a group of 4 and 5 year olds, and one child called the father, "grandpa". After an interesting discussion, I polled the children to learn if they thought the parents were parents or grand-parents. Everyone said "grandparents." To me, this provokes an interesting inconsistency between the text and the illustrations. I'm not saying that anything is wrong with this unusual perspective of a older parents, but I do wonder if having the text say father while the child potentially translates the illustration as grandfather affects children's response to the book.

I also wonder, for an award that consciously selects winners for the text, if a potential inconsistency between the text and the illustrations can be construed as a problem.

Nick Glass Pooh Corner bookstore Madison, WI
Received on Tue 23 Mar 1999 07:42:36 PM CST