From: Carol Hurst <carolhur>
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 16:59:31 -0500

Oh, this is such a good topic and I feel very fortunate in that I have read and loved each of the books mentioned.

I read "Knots in My Yo Yo String" first . I grew up ten years or more before Jerry Spinelli in a blue collar town many, many miles from Norristown, PA, but I felt he was writing about our neighborhood, our rules and our delights and our tortures. The sections that most delighted me were the one about the mother who whistled her children in and the one about the Sunday school teacher. They make me cry and laugh simultaneously.

Lois Lowry's "Looking Back" brings forth laughter and tears from me as well. Add understanding to what I get from "Looking Back". I understand a bit better where the roots of some of her books began. The skill with which Lois choose those particular photographs and the order in which she places them in the book are truly extraordinary. The quotes from her various books are also aptly chosen. She manages to tell us exactly enough to appreciate these people who stare back at us from those pages.

Anita Lobel's "No Pretty Pictures" is like the other two only in that they are all autobiographical. I think the similarity stops right there. Lobel's story is linear. She remarkably keeps a child's eye view of a time and its horrors. Both Spinelli and Lowry make me envy their lives, one very privileged and one very free. Not so, Anita Lobel's. I wanted to make up to her for all the horror she had witnessed and I was overwhelmed that the lovely, vivacious and creative woman that I know to be Anita Lobel was able to emerge from it.

All three books are such gems. Together they've raised the level of children's writer's bios so that we'll never be satisfied with anything less again.

I'm very anxious to hear what the rest of you think about them. Carol Otis Hurst
Received on Thu 01 Apr 1999 03:59:31 PM CST