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Searching... Monmouth Public Library | HELLDORFER | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... West Salem Branch Library | JP Helldorfer | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Great Aunt Liza is sending Lucy a birthday gift. She puts it in a wooden box with a latch and gives it to her friend to take west to Lucy by mail coach. And that's where the adventure begins. As the box makes its way across the country by the kindness of strangers, each one adds a token of his or her own to Lucy's present. Over rutted roads, past thousands of hogs and some hungry goats, the box finds its way to Lucy. In M.C. Helldorfer's energetic words and S.D. Schindler's exuberant art, a touching and very funny picture of nineteenth-century life emerges.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 4-A whimsical, well-researched story. During the first half of the 19th century, Lucy's family heads west for a better life. They leave behind cranky Aunt Liza, who believes that there is "Nothing but hog music out there," and journey to Illinois. When Aunt Liza buys Lucy a new straw hat for her birthday and mails it off to her in a wooden box with a latch, the adventure begins. The route it must travel is via the National Public Road, the major travel route from Maryland to the Mississippi. After a mishap on the mail coach, it travels by handcart, then by Conestoga wagon, carriage, traveling-show wagon, and peddler's cart until it finally arrives at its destination. Each person who finds the box along the way opens it and inserts something-a feather, a clay marble, a ribbon, coffee beans, face cream. Each leg of the journey is packed with details about life at that time and conveys the message of how people helped one another out in simple ways. Schindler's charming, detailed illustrations give more information about the journey and what life was like on the road: where people slept, what they did for entertainment, who traveled, and mishaps that might have occurred. The story has appeal for many ages and should find a place in most libraries and classrooms.-Lee Bock, Glenbrook Elementary School, Pulaski, WI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Jaunty watercolor and gouache illustrations on parchment paper set the tone for this rollicking 1840s adventure tale of a birthday present gone astray. As young Lucy's family prepares to head West to Illinois, Aunt Liza refuses to go with them. "Nothing but hog music out there," she grumbles. Some months later, the woman packs "a plain straw hat in a plain wooden box" for Lucy's birthday, and sends it on its way with a traveling friend. When the hatbox bounces off the stagecoach, the gift falls into the hands of various characters, each of whom contributes something to the box and simultaneously fills in details of daily life (a portrait artist adds a miniature painting of his grandmother's pet hog, a farm boy pops in a clay marble, etc.). Eventually, the hatbox reaches a puzzled Lucy and her family. When Lucy writes a thank-you note back, Aunt Liza, beguiled by Lucy's talk not of hogs, but of prairie grass and "wind music," heads West for a happy reunion. Helldorfer (Phoebe and the River Flute) adopts a folksy tone for her spry story ("Whooeeee! That stagecoach headed westDand up and down and left and right") and serves up artful images ("the moon rising like a shiny supper plate over the mountains"). Schindler's (A Big Cheese for the White House) artwork wrings the most out of the tale's humorous elements (such as vignettes of seven men toe-tapping at dance lessons, then sleeping side by side in front of a roaring fire), while maintaining the precision of miniatures, and he fleshes out the scenes with an abundance of period particulars. Readers will be shouting "Westward Ho!" right along with Aunt Liza. Ages 3-8. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
A plain straw hat is a much improved gift when it finally reaches its destination in Illinois with the help of some travelers heading west circa 1840. The period story gives a sense of nineteenth-century life--from its curious conveyances to the sense of adventure. While simplistic at times, the folk-art-like illustrations provide a homey, comfortable atmosphere. From HORN BOOK Fall 2000, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Helldorfer (Silver Rain Brown, 1999, etc.) and Schindler (Sunwing, 1999, etc.) expose a colorful slice of early Americana, sending a birthday gift on an adventurous journey along the early 19th-century thoroughfare known as the National Public Road. Aunt Liza pops a plain straw hat into a round box and sends it to young Lucy in distant Illinois via a westward-bound traveler. Thanks to a series of bumps, breakdowns, chance encounters'and one mischievous monkey in a traveling show'the box passes from hand to hand, gaining or losing something at each stop. It arrives at last, worn, but filled with mementos, from coffee beans and a clay marble to a folk painter's portrait of a pet hog. Suffused with warm humor, Schindler's clean-lined, finely detailed paintings capture not only a sense of period but what it must have been like to travel down a road only slightly less rough (and usually muddier) than the surrounding countryside. Young readers will pore over the contents of a peddler's wagon and a general store, laugh at the expressive livestock and the gift's misadventures, and share Lucy's final pleasure at the box's contents and the subsequent arrival of Aunt Liza herself. Like Karen Ackerman's Araminta's Paintbox, this combines enticing glimpses of life along an early American highway with an anything but sedate journey tale. A delight. (Picture book. 7-9)