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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | EASY ASH | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | EASY ASH | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Many places can make a home--a silent cave, a secret den, a silky web, even a sticky honeycomb. Each one is safe and snug and just right for the families who live there. Linda Ashman's spare, lyrical text and Lauren Stringer's sumptuous paintings invite you to explore some of these wonderful homes and see how different--yet alike--they can be.
Author Notes
LINDA ASHMAN has explored caves, slept on sandy dunes, and even stayed in a castle, but she now lives with her family in a house in Los Angeles, California.
LAUREN STRINGER is the illustrator of several picture books, including Scarecrow by Cynthia Rylant. She lives with her family in a pink Victorian house in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
With glorious acrylic paintings, Stringer (Scarecrow) shows how, in debut author Ashman's words, "A home's a house, a den, a nest./ A place to play,/ A place to rest./ A place to share,/ A place to hug,/ A home is someplace safe and snug" for a wide range of animals (including humans). Using a palette of deep, smudged hues, Stringer works her heady visual magic in two formats. Most of the illustrations are single-paged, womb-shaped vignettes on white backgrounds; in one picture, a beaver family waits in a cozy stick den for the arrival of father beaver, who swims in a swirled arc of blue-green, tree-fringed water that seems to cradle the home. In double-page spreads, the artist renders a monarch butterfly cocoon close-up, its luxuriant ripeness foreshadowing the being about to burst forth; in another, a sinuous, olive-green snail coyly slides away from view, all the better to display the hypnotic allure of its coppery, spiral shell. "There's no place like home" has been said many times and in many ways, but rarely so convincingly. Ages 2-5. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Preschool) ""A home's a house, a den, a nest. / A place to play, / A place to rest."" Linda Ashman's lilting phrases and Lauren Stringer's rounded illustrations offer a simple, idealized meditation on the many things a home can be. Twenty-four familiar animals and their shelters are presented in no particular order+beaver dam in a river, beehive in a tree, eagle's aerie, spider's web+and the whole provides a soothing bedtime story with a natural history bent. The images gently swoop from one locale to another+from the arctic to the desert, from ""a sloping cliff above the shore"" to ""a hole beneath the kitchen floor""+giving momentum to the rhythmic text. Plenty of white space around the reassuring compositions reinforces the book's cozy mood. Stringer's densely colored, self-contained paintings provide a loose framework: pictures at the beginning and near the book's end show two children playing in their yard and observing some of the animals mentioned in the text. These images culminate in a cutaway of their bedroom, showing the children ""safe and snug"" in their beds with a dog and cat curled up at their feet. Together, the concise text and the womb-like illustrations convey the feelings of love, safety, and security that a home should have. This is just right to listen to from the warm refuge of a favorite lap. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Ages 2^-5. Ashman's rhyming verse explores the dwellings of different animals, in a series of short phrases, such as "A silky web./ A sandy dune./ A room inside a warm cocoon." The words roll forward rhythmically, creating a satisfying pattern of sounds as effective as the word pictures of animal homes. Stringer interprets the verse in a series of paintings that echo the cozy reassurance of the text through the repetition of rounded forms and subtly graded shades of color. Each home, whether shell, nest, or den, offers a unique and comforting haven for its inhabitants. Collectively, they offer a vision as cozy as mama raccoon's encircling hug, seen from the end of her hollow log home. Every aspect of the art is curved: the lines themselves, the overall shapes of the pictures, and the path the eye follows in looking at each of the illustrations. The only truly straight lines are found in the typeface and the edges of the pages. The result is a warm, comforting vision of home, extending from the animals in the natural world to the children sleeping in their beds on the last page. Beautifully crafted and satisfying. --Carolyn Phelan
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 3-Written in verse, this book looks at the many varied and unique dwellings that different creatures live in: "Many places make a home-/A heap of twigs./A honeycomb./A castle with/a tower or two./An aerie with/a bird's-eye view." The various habitats are described in a well-balanced rhythm, as single-page illustrations move to double-page spreads. The short phrases and rhymes make the text accessible to beginning readers. Because the names of the animals are not mentioned, children can try to identify the creatures that live in each place, adding an element of participation to the story. Done in swirling acrylics, the bright and cheerful art provides visual clues to the text and reinforces the message about homes being "safe and snug." This title can be enjoyed as poetry or paired with Mary Ann Hoberman's A House Is a House for Me (Puffin, 1982) as part of a unit on dwellings.- Maura Bresnahan, Shawsheen School, Andover, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
"Many places make a homea heap of twigs. / A honeycomb. / A castle with a tower or two. / An aerie with a bird's-eye view. . . ." In her simply phrased rhyme, Ashman surveys a variety of shelters, natural and artificial, leading up to the moot but reassuring assertion that "A home is someplace safe and snug." In big, richly colored scenes of beaver, bear, and other animal families curled up together, or solitary creatures from cocooned caterpillar to a rippling, spread-sized snail, Stringer expresses the cozy theme brilliantly, composing each picture with strongly drawn lines that curve around and in like cupped, protective hands. The message may be an arguable one (especially considering that the "honeycomb" in one picture has just been discovered by a bear), but except perhaps for Mary Ann Hoberman's classic A House Is a House For Me (1978), it has never been better conveyed. (Picture book. 5-8)
