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Summary
Summary
My eyes are green like the sea, like the sea And my hair is dark and blows free, blows free. Sing of your parents, and your grandparents too, and picture a magnificent family tree. Its roots are deep, nurtured with the lives of ancestors. Some left willingly for the new land, others did not -- and many were already here! Their blood flows in yourveins; their strength lies in your heart. Inspired by American folk art, Sheila Hamanaka, author and illustrator of the best-selling All the Colors of the Earth, has created vibrant, stunningly beautiful illustrations to tell the story of our country's family tree.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 4-In rhythmic verses that flow like a song, a young girl recounts the roots of her family tree. Fondly and respectfully, she describes her grandparents-one American Indian, one Irish, one Mexican, and one a descendent of African slaves. Beautifully rendered in calligraphy, the text is clean, simple, and lilting, with appealing use of phrase repetition within some lines. It sounds great when shared aloud but there's also a core of quietness suitable for solo reading. Filled with magnificent texture, Hamanaka's oil paintings are substantial and striking. The artwork sits inside rustic frames featuring details that expand on the poem. Created by several different artists out of sculpted wood, beadwork, and Celtic bas-relief and then photographed, these borders give character and definition to the illustrations. On one spread, a beaded red cloth with horsetails running down the sides surrounds an image of a Native American woman riding an Appaloosa. In another picture, an old handsaw, blade's teeth pointing upward, forms the top edge of a scene depicting the American West, "where the trees talk to heaven." The themes of love, cooperation, human progress, and freedom permeate this offering. The conclusion will resonate in the minds and hearts of many readers: "Yes, my eyes are green like the sea, like the sea/and my hair is dark and blows free, blows free/My hair is dark and blows free."-Liza Graybill, Worcester Public Library, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Hamanaka (All the Colors of the Earth) is in high form with another stirring ode to the beauty of the richly multiethnic world we inhabit. In melodic verse, the girl with green eyes, light brown skin and long black hair pictured in the opening illustrations tells the stories of her parents and grandparents-what they look like and where they came from. "And her mother came/ eyes of black, eyes of black/ on an Appaloosa horse/ with a broad, strong back/ .../ She married a man/ eyes of green, eyes of green/ who had left his own pony/ 'cross the cold northern sea." Bas relief, horse hair and beadwork number among the materials used for the frames (created by additional artists) that border Hamanaka's illustrations; these meticulous works of art are intrinsic to the presentation of each painting. For instance, red cloth decorated with a beaded floral pattern on top and bottom, with brown and blond horsetails on each side, surrounds the painting of the young Native American woman riding her horse. A three-masted schooner sails across a spread between two beautifully carved wooden figures, accompanying the text, "Grandfather's people/ had crossed the great sea/ Their bodies were chained/ but their souls fought free." The overall message of this subtle yet dramatically realized poem is that love, for others and self, triumphs over adversity. All ages. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
A girl tells of her ancestry, which includes grandmothers of Native and Latin descent and grandfathers of African and European descent. The sometimes self-consciously lyrical rhyming text (I reach for the sky / like a tree, like a tree) and inventive art, which enlists wood sculpture, beadwork, and other media, elegantly convey the book's unstated message: that this girl's family history is also this country's. From HORN BOOK Fall 2003, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Stunning illustrations inspired by folk art illuminate Hamanaka's song celebrating the diversity of a young American girl's heritage and her roots in the land. "My eyes are green like the sea, like the sea and my hair is dark and blows free, blows free." Many of the pictures are framed with old wood, but one is framed with twigs, another is topped by a saw, and another by beadwork and horse hair on a rich red background. The grandparents' pictures contain intricate cultural details, particularly in the decoration of the frames. The girl sings of her mother's mother and father--one of Native American and one of northern European descent, and of her father's father and mother, one with African and one with Mexican heritage. The grandparents came from the sun, from the earth, and from east and west, and they came in search of freedom. The father's page is breathtaking in its congruence of words and pictures: "Father says he came from the South, from the South where the scent of magnolia lulls the cottonmouth." Father, mother, and daughter stand beside an avenue of trees leading to a stately plantation reminiscent of Oak Alley, Louisiana. Cotton clouds emerge from a basket to float gently over their heads. Barely visible in the foreground are tiny images of slaves picking cotton. Encircling the picture is a sinuous shape marked by the black and brown patterns of a cottonmouth snake that at one point eerily morph into figures with peaked hoods, a noose, and a burning cross. A lush white magnolia blossom fills the snake's open mouth. This is no romanticized vision of the past; it is rich and multi-layered. Like the beautiful child who gracefully combines the sometimes conflicted heritage of her ancestors, this lovely work combines diverse artistic traditions to create a whole that is, like the American family tree, beautiful and strong. (Picture book/poetry. 6-9) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
K^-Gr. 3. In rhyming text with a pleasant refrain, Hamanaka celebrates ancestry and diversity as she tells of a girl with green eyes and free-flowing black hair who traces her genealogy back through her grandparents. The girl first describes her maternal line, her mother and her Native American grandmother, who married a railroad worker with "eyes of green." She then turns to her paternal grandmother, who rode a jaguar across the Rio Grande, and to her grandfather's people crossing "the great sea / Their bodies were chained, but their souls fought free." "My roots run deep," reads the text, and the illustrations reflect tree imagery--sometimes in birch tree borders, sometimes in depictions of massive trees. Clues in the girl's words and hints in the art, especially in the magnificent borders, which range from Celtic bas-relief to Native American beadwork, give little ones insight into the girl's ancestry. --Connie Fletcher