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Summary
Summary
A rollicking, rhyming, fun rendition of a favorite folksong about a many-times recycled coat -- by the award-winning, bestselling team of Jim Aylesworth and Barbara McClintock. Sydney Taylor Award Winner"A moving tale of love and regeneration." -- The New York Times When my grandfather came to America he made himself a handsome coat!Then he wore it and he wore it and he wore it--until it was all worn out!So what did he do? He snipped and he clipped-- and he stitched and he sewed. . . and out of the still-good cloth of his coat--he made himself a smart jacket! How many things can Grandfather makeout of that old frayed coat? Jim Aylesworth's satisfying retelling and Barbara McClintock's heart-warming pictures celebrate the clever recycling of a beloved coat that lasts four generations -- until it becomes this story!
Author Notes
Barbara McClintock has written and/or illustrated over 40 distinguished books for children. Emma and Julia Love Ballet which she wrote and illustrated, received three starred reviews, and My Grandfather's Coat , retold by Jim Aylesworth, also received three starred reviews and was named a Sydney Taylor Honor Book. Her books have five times been named New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books. She has received a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, as well as a myriad of other awards and honors. Barbara lives in Connecticut with her family and their four very graceful cats.
Jim Aylesworth tells his stories with generous doses of "out loud" sounds, rhythms, and rhymes. His twenty-five-year teaching career taught him exactly what children love best in a story. He lives in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Starred Review. Based on the Yiddish folksong I Had a Little Overcoat, this splendid tale chronicles four generations. Aylesworth and McClintock (who collaborated on Our Abe Lincoln) perform a lovely pas de deux, from a boys arrival at Ellis Island (He came alone and with little more than nothing at all) to his story being shared with a great-grandson. In America, the young man becomes a tailor and, for his wedding, He snipped, and he clipped, and he stitched, and he sewed, and he made for himself a handsome coat. The midnight-blue, knee-length coat serves him for years, until at last.../ he wore it out! In meticulous panels, McClintock pictures the man and his wife working and caring for a daughter, who grows up to have a daughter of her own, and so on. Aylesworth repeats the snipping-and-clipping, stitching-and-sewing formula, with the grandfather altering his coat into a smart jacket, a snazzy vest, and finally a stylish tie that he wore on my mothers wedding day! Warmth emanates from this thoughtful book, which deserves to become a multigenerational family favorite. Ages 4-8. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Revisiting the Yiddish folksong celebrated in Simms Taback's Caldecott-winning Joseph Had a Little Overcoat, Aylesworth extends its events over four generations, affording McClintock the opportunity to sample dress and households from the early twentieth century to the near-present. As title-page art reveals, "my grandfather" landed at Ellis Island; he became a tailor and made his own blue wedding coat. "He wore it, and he wore it" and, with a move to a country farm revealed in the art, "little bit by little bit, / he frayed it, and he tore it / [so] he snipped, and he clipped, / and he stitched, and he sewed." While his daughter's a baby, that "still-good cloth" serves for a jacket. Soon it's reduced to a vest, then a tie for his daughter's wedding (and later for his granddaughter's, too), then a toy for "you" (his great-grandchild), and at last a toy mouse that -- once "you wore it out" -- is left for a real mouse to shred into a nest "until there was nothing left at allexcept for this story." With its engaging cadence and catchy repetitions, Aylesworth's text propels the art through periods that are revealed in sewing machine styles, kitchen details, a synagogue wedding, toys, and much more. Old-timey and inviting, the book has well-paced pages, spreads, and vignettes that nicely celebrate one family's ongoing affection and continuity. Author's and artist's notes confide some contrasting bits of their own family histories as well as a bit more about the settings. joanna rudge long (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
This moving immigration story begins with the narrator's grandfather arriving in New York City and diligently working as a tailor. For his wedding day, he makes himself a long coat, which he wears all the time, and little bit by little bit, / he frayed it and he tore it. But all is not lost, for the resourceful tailor snips and sews and turns the fine coat into a jacket. The jacket becomes a vest, the vest becomes a tie, and the tie makes it through the years until the grandfather becomes a great-grandfather and gives his great-grandson a stuffed mouse out of the last fabric remnants. And what happens when the fabric is all gone forever? Well, it lives on in this very story. McClintock's warm, realistic watercolor-and-ink illustrations follow the family through the years and capture lively period details that mark the passage of time. Based on a familiar Yiddish folk song and enlivened by a light tone, this tale of family, creativity, and resourcefulness is a warm, touching read-aloud.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2014 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
A REALLY GOOD children's book and the ideal grandparent have something in common. It's a special kind of bonding, when you feel you just can't wait to visit time and again. A good book about a good grandparent should double the payoff. And in some cases, it does. "Mr. Frank" is a grandfather story about a tailor, inspired by the author and artist Irene Luxbacher's own father. The old man receives an order for an article of clothing so special that the moment he finishes it he decides to retire. What is it? That's the drama of the book - we have to keep guessing, as Mr. Frank vows that the outfit he's at work on will outdo the clothes he made or mended 60 years ago (World War II uniforms) and 50 years ago ("Madmen"-style suits) and 40 years ago (miniskirts) and so on. I'll spill the beans: He's making a superhero outfit for a grandson who eagerly greets the costume and its maker as they arrive, with trunks and suitcases, at the boy's front door. The ending is nicely cozy, but the bulk of the book is Mr. Frank reminiscing about his decades of costume construction. Luxbacher's colors are bright and distinctive, and she's good at composing, though the collage-style pictures feel to me a little like a psychedelic video from the 1970s. Starting around that era, art education began placing less emphasis on traditional drawing skills. Wonderful art can be made in their absence; in fact, too much drawing facility can look trivial or dull, and none at all is sometimes charming. But while many of the pages in this book are visually rich, on some of them hands look like misshapen mittens or arms look put on backward, and I wish for better. The book will be Memory Lane for many adults, but until the ending younger viewers won't discern much more than the swirl of patterns the tailor sews through the decades. As a picture book, "Gus & Me" shares some of the problems of "Mr. Frank," but it does give us a rewarding grandparent-grandchild relationship from the very beginning. It's the true story of a boy who loves to go walking with his eccentric granddad (who's been a soldier, a baker, a leader of a dance band). When they enter a musical instrument workshop, the boy's soul is stirred, and his life's journey (as it turns out) set. With his grandfather's gentle guidance, he will become a guitar player, and when he plays onstage he'll always think gratefully of his granddad. The story of grandparental attachment and personal growth is beautifully told, and in no way relies for its impact on the fact that we're getting it from the mouth, or keyboard, of Keith Richards (with Barnaby Harris and Bill Shapiro also credited). The illustrator is Richards's daughter Theodora, who is an artist, but this is a first picture book for both of them. Her drawings recall 1950s illustration - colored, decorative elements overlaying scratchy black-line drawings in a counterpoint of imagery. They work as metaphors, often without quite illustrating the story. We barely see the two protagonists together, and where we do, the poses, the anatomy, the faces and the emotions expressed miss the mark rather uncomfortably. But the story is enough to hold its own, and I think this book will resonate with both children and the gatekeepers of children's books. Still more resonant (here's the double payoff) is "My Grandfather's Coat," a text adapted by Jim Aylesworth from a traditional Yiddish song, and illustrated by Barbara McClintock. The original verses give a first-person account of material disappearance: I had a little overcoat; it was so worn out I made it into a vest. Then a tie. Then a button. Then nothing. I had nothing, and I made it into a song. (It's been picture-book material more than once; "Joseph Had a Little Overcoat" won Simms Taback the Caldecott Medal in 2000.) Aylesworth's adaptation feels almost like a song, and reads aloud beautifully. The coat here belongs not to the narrator but to her grandfather, and it ends, of course, not as this song, but as this story. In between, we're led through four generations of everyday rural life, from Grandfather's turn-of-the-20th-century arrival in America "with little more than nothing at all," through his wedding, work, play, family holidays, his daughter's wedding and her daughter's, too. Through all of this he wears, loves and preserves what started out as the beautiful coat, and would have finished as his great-grandson's toy, except that it's shredded, and so becomes home to a mouse family before moldering to nothing at all. The Yiddish song is clever. In Aylesworth's hands it's also a moving tale of love and regeneration. We might not even know this, though, without McClintock's equally moving illustrations. In an impressive example of text seamlessly handing the storytelling off to the pictures, her carefully watercolored ink drawings take the simple words ("He wore it and he wore it") and give them whole worlds of meaning (a granddaughter is born, learns to walk, to ride a tricycle, a bicycle). McClintock has drawing skills in spades. Her books sometimes look like suites of 18th-century etchings, but more accessible. Here, though, she's emulating Randolph Caldecott himself, whose seminal picture books are still the paragon of lively visual storytelling. She honors the song's Jewish roots unobtrusively (we know the family's religion only by recognizing the Jewish wedding scene, or the Hanukkah dinner with a menorah and latkes), and she has set it in the rural Connecticut landscape where she herself lives, and where, she tells us in an artist's note, a program in the early 1900s resettled poor urban Jews. The specificity and accuracy she invested in these drawings (here, as with Mr. Frank, we can track changing styles through the decades) makes them feel universal. As do the cyclical themes of generation following generation, and of the recycled material of the grandfather's coat. With its final illustration of the tailor's granddaughter reading to her son from the same book we're holding in our hands, we feel a great gift has been passed down. It's love, family and story. The story is the gift. It's a good book. Grandparents, be advised. PAUL O. ZELINSKY is a Caldecott-winning illustrator and author of many books for children.
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-This new adaptation of the Yiddish folk song presented in Simms Taback's Joseph Had a Little Overcoat (Viking, 1999) and Phoebe Gilman's Something from Nothing (Scholastic, 1992) is a fresh rhythmic retelling with charming cartoon-style illustrations that deserves a place even in collections that own the other two. Aylesworth's story, told in the voice of the main character's granddaughter, recounts highlights of her grandfather's life: coming to America, becoming a tailor, and making himself "a handsome coat...that he wore on his wedding day!" The worn coat becomes "a smart jacket"; the shabby jacket, "a snazzy vest"; the frayed vest, "a stylish tie." In this version, the threadbare tie is transformed into a toy for a great grandson's kittens, then a cozy nest for a mouse and her babies. As in both older versions, this one features repetition and a rhyming refrain. McClintock's pen-and-ink detailed watercolor illustrations highlight four generations of family history. Following the title-page scene that shows ships streaming toward Ellis Island, then a photolike pose of grandfather as a boy on deck passing the Statue of Liberty, the story unfolds in two-to-three small vignettes per page, each accompanied by a snippet of text, with a full-page scene at each major juncture. The paintings highlight McClintock's special skill for aging grandpa. Her eye for detail is apparent in ever-changing clothing styles; in a sole coming loose from young grandpa's shoe; and the evolution of his sewing machines from treadle to modern motorized. This is a tale worth reading again and again.-Susan Scheps, formerly at Shaker Public Library, OH (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
An immigrant tailor passes the American dream on to new generations, one stitch at a time. He made a coat for his wedding and wore it for years until it was ragged and torn, at which point he cut it down to make a jacket. The pattern continues, with each item becoming smaller. The jacket became a vest, then a tie, then a toy for a great-grandchild. The worn-out toy provides a nest for a mouse until that also disintegrates into nothing. But, of course there's more to it, for it is now a wonderful story. Aylesworth takes an old Yiddish folk song and tale and, just like the tailor, brings it to fresh, new life. Two sprightly snatches of singsong repetition accompany the deterioration of each of the garments and the stitching of the new one. "He wore it, and he wore it.[H]e frayed it, and he tore it" is followed by "he snipped, and he clipped, and he stitched, and he sewed." Each incarnation comes after years of hard work and rites of passage, only a few of which are stated in the text. McClintock's depictions of the tailor through his lifetime, rendered in pen, ink and watercolor, are detailed evocations of a warm, loving family. The narrative and illustrations make a perfect whole. Sweet and tender and joyful. (author's note, illustrator's note) (Picture book. 4-9) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
