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|---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | EASY CRO | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | EASY CRO | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | EASY CRO | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | EASY CRO | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | EASY CRO | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Winner of the 2011 Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, the 2010 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the 2011 Ezra Jack Keats and New York Public Library New Writer Award, and a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Children's Illustration
The little girl in this story lives with her family in a trailer in northeastern Saskatchewan, where her father is building a dam. She knows everything about the place she lives -- her road, her school, the forest where she plays hide-and-seek and where the wolf howls at night, the hill where she goes tobogganing in winter . . .
But the dam is nearly finished and when summer comes the family is moving to Toronto -- a place marked by a big red star on the map at school. Have people in Toronto seen what I've seen? the little girl asks. And with her teacher's help she finds a way to keep everything she loves about home.
This simple, beautifully written story, complemented by Matt James's vibrant, imaginative illustrations, will resonate deeply with anyone who has had to leave their home for a new place.
Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.7
Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.
Author Notes
Laurel Croza is the author of the picture book I Know Here, illustrated by Matt James. It won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award and the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, among many other accolades. She also wrote the sequel, From There to Here. The Whirlpool is Laurel's first short-story collection. She lives with her husband in Toronto.
Matt James is a painter, author/illustrator and musician whose many highly acclaimed children's books include Yellow Moon, Apple Moon by Pamela Porter (New Mexico Book Award); I Know Here by Laurel Croza (Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award) and its companion volume, From There to Here; and The Stone Thrower by Jael Ealey Richardson. Matt's illustrations for Northwest Passage, a stunning tribute to the iconic Stan Rogers song, won the Governor General's Literary Award. He also wrote and illustrated the highly acclaimed book The Funeral. Matt lives in Toronto.
Reviews (5)
Horn Book Review
Upon hearing the news that her family will be moving to Toronto, a little girl claims and names the details of her life in a one-road community of eighteen trailers, homes to the workers, like the girl's father, on a now-completed dam on the North Saskatchewan river. (Clothing and trailer design suggest that the dam is the E. B. Campbell Dam, completed in 1963.) The narrative is intensely first-personal, as the never-named little girl describes the things and places that matter most to her: "I count the trailers on the other side of the road. There are ten. A fox lives in a cage behind one of them. I know the fox's damp fur smell before I see him." While the text is deliberate and declarative, the illustrations, while respecting all the details important to the girl, are extravagantly expressionistic, the cool colors of the trailers and trees and sky making the honey color of the fox, or the spring-green of a frog, all the richer. Round, comforting shapes are everywhere, from the curve of the purple-black road to the old-fashioned tube TV set upon a tree stump for a community's Sunday night entertainment. In the end, the girl determines to take to Toronto all that her senses have given her, a firm grounding for a new life. Don't miss the endpapers, a map of the central provinces, embellished with a child's priorities. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Based on the author's childhood memories of leaving northeastern Saskatchewan for Toronto, this debut picture book captures a child's fear of moving with a touch of magic realism. Both words and pictures show a little girl's frustration and uncertainty when she learns that she will be uprooted ( I don't know Toronto ) and her sadness at leaving behind what she knows and loves. Before she moves, she lives in a trailer park where her dad is building a dam, and energetic, colorful pictures in acrylic and india ink show her playing hide-and-seek in the forest, listening to wolves howl at night, and going to school with nine other kids: only me in grade three. She is terrified of the city, and the pictures show her imagined images of big looming buildings that look like monsters. Kids facing their own wrenching upheavals will take heart in the girl's celebration of her roots and what she knows about herself and the world, all of which give her strength to move on.--Rochman, Hazel Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
MEMORY is an act of preservation. To remember, you have to do something: pay attention, take a picture, nab a souvenir. Laurel Croza's "I Know Here" is a simple and profound book about a child who, on learning her family is moving, draws pictures of her home as keepsakes. The narrator's home is in remote Saskatchewan. She lives in a trailer with four siblings and attends school with eight other children. She is the only third grader. Families occupy trailers along a road near a dam under construction. Her father works there. By the end of the school year, the dam will be built, prompting the move to Toronto. "I don't know Toronto," the girl says. "I know here." And she catalogs what she knows. She counts the homes on her road and describes the wolves at night. She knows the fox behind a trailer, the frogs in her sister's bucket, the man who delivers groceries. She sees her home in a new light. This is not just what kids do; adults do it as well. Nostalgia doesn't require absence: knowing we are going to leave, we imagine having already left. Today, parents can hand children digital cameras to photograph their bedrooms and backyard play sets. But the girl in this story (who remains unnamed, although Croza based the story on her childhood) isn't worried that the kids in Toronto won't know what a moose looks like. She worries they won't know what kind of person she is. She asks her teacher, "Have people in Toronto seen what I've seen?" Her teacher invites her to draw what she knows. Inspired, the girl doesn't want to photograph her surroundings. She wants to make pictures of her memories. Matt James calibrates his paintings to convey the relationship between memory and art, between what a child sees and how she recalls the experience of seeing. He uses heavy, playful brushwork to layer acrylic over background washes, all on a slick, shiny board. The colors are vibrant and saturated, stamped indelibly onto the surface. To render a forest fire the girl witnessed, James brushes a white wash of smoke on top of a smeary forest, the trees outlined in India ink. The layering of paint, the dark outlines of animals and objects, the piling on and scratching away: all these techniques find parallels in the workings of memory. A story about a child leaving home could have been treated as a weepy leave-taking shaded with sepia sentiment. Heroically, Croza balances her story on something far more hopeful and true: a child realizing that the act of making art is a way to preserve memories of home. And to remember, you have to do something: pay attention, draw a picture, and take it with you. David Barringer is the author of "There's Nothing Funny About Design."
School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-5-Moving from rural Saskatchewan to the city holds a lot of opportunity for a girl and her brother. The young protagonist experiences her share of apprehension as well, "This is where I live. I don't know Toronto. I know here." "Here" is first described as a single, trailer-lined road that runs from the dam that her father is working on to the school. Readers are then treated to the flora and fauna of the forest, hills, and creeks that the girl will miss. There's the man who delivers the groceries, her teacher, and her classmates, too. Miss Hendrickson suggests that she draw a picture encompassing all that she'd like to remember. She does and after sharing it with the class, she folds it away for safekeeping. "I will fold up the howl of the wolf and the smell of the fox in his cage...and the feel of my heart beating fast as I swooped over my road in a five-seater airplane. I will fold my drawing up small, put it safe in my pocket and I will take my road with me. To Toronto." The simple, straightforward text is spot-on in capturing the child's sensibilities and feelings. James's vibrant acrylic and India ink on panel artwork brings the girl's world to life, with its starkness, beauty, and haunting appeal. The stylized paintings at times have a surreal quality and are almost dreamlike in their composition. A regional look at a universal slice of childhood.-Luann Toth, School Library Journal (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Going walkabout down the small stretch of country road that she and her family are about to leave, a child offers a mildly comforting strategy to others who are about to pull up stakes. Her little brother is excited about moving to Toronto, but to the narrator, "This is where I live. I don't know Toronto. I know here." "Here" is rural Saskatchewan, where her family has been living while her father worked on a hydroelectric dam, now complete. Walking from home to school ("only me in grade three") and back, she counts her community's house trailers along the roadside, waves to a familiar passerby and recalls sighting a moose and hearing wolves in the surrounding woods. Her mood lightens at last when she realizes that she can capture and retain at least some of her small world by drawing pictures of it. James's vividly colored, nave-style scenes capture the bright intensity of the child's inner and outer landscapes and also the unaffected way in which she observes them. Good for sharing. (Picture book. 7-9) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
