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Summary
Summary
In a picture book that blends realism and fantasy, a shoeshine boy is surprised when a
piece of red silk falls from the sky. Trying to find its owner, he ventures up and down
fire escapes, back and forth across clotheslines, and into the company of the colorfully
diverse people who live in the tenement. Lively pages laid out in multiple panels, with
a few words of text in dialogue balloons, capture the exhilarating action, and foreignlanguage
phrases are translated on the endpapers. There is a cheerful side to a neighborhood
packed with people of different origins--the opportunity to make friends
across race lines, culture lines, and clotheslines!
Author Notes
Maurie J. Manning's inspiration for this book is her own large family, which emigrated from various countries via Ellis Island in the early 1900s. The illustrator of numerous children's books, she lives in Berkeley, California. Visit her website at www.mauriejmanning.com .
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In a vivid, warmhearted picture book that unfolds in graphic novel-style panels, a shoeshine boy living in a 1900s immigrant neighborhood (think New York City's Lower East Side) unexpectedly finds a bright red scarf. Determined to locate its owner, the boy embarks on a grand tour of the tenements, meeting Chinese, Polish, Italian, Ukrainian, Jamaican, and Yiddish-speaking inhabitants (a short glossary concludes the book), and earning a mooncake, pennies, and even a bowl of matzo ball soup for his efforts. ("Such a good boy, to come all this way," says Rabbi Shulevitz's wife.) Manning's pages are exuberance itself as her hero balletically bounds from frame to frame, leaping onto fire escapes, scrambling up and shimmying down water pipes, and using clotheslines as a tightrope and zip line. Manning (Kitchen Dance) may be stretching history slightly to imagine so many different nationalities inhabiting this environment (the demographics could be more 21st-century than 20th), but what really matters is that at every stop, the shoeshine boy finds that the global village is a welcoming, benevolent place. Ages 4-8. Agent: Scott Treimel, Scott Treimel NY. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
The city street below the tenements bustles with vendors and shoppers, but no one has time for the winsome shoeshine boy. Spotting a scarlet piece of cloth drifting from above, he sets out to find its owner, ascending faades from barrel to drainpipe, fire escape to balcony. Along the way he meets, helps, and is advised by many of the buildings' tenants -- a Chinese laundress who gives him a mooncake; the Polish mother of an inconsolable baby; an organ grinder; a rabbi and his wife who share their soup. Finally, on the roof, there's the Jamaican pigeon keeper whose scarf blew from her laundry line. As the boy climbs down, the grateful woman divides her red cloth and sends half (via pigeon) back down to him, who -- thanks to this cheerful new scarf and his new friends -- now has customers lining up. There's much to discover in the varied, well-paced frames of this graphic picture book -- a cat following along with its own climbing strategies; the intriguing laundry hanging from the dozens of lines crossing above the street. It's a mystery how these lines work (there'd need to be pulleys, no?) and more than a whiff of fantasy in the way the boy travels them like tightropes. The marvelous freedom of his airy progress recalls Lamorisse's Red Balloon, while the friendly, twentieth-century immigrant community makes a heartwarming vision of international good will. joanna rudge long (c) Copyright 2012. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Lost in a crowded late-nineteenth-century New York street scene, a young shoe shiner can't convince anyone to stop at his box. When a swath of bright-red fabric falls from the sky, he takes it upon himself to find its owner. He scales an apartment building and stops to ask everyone he meets if the cloth is theirs, but everyone sends him ever onward and upward. Each interaction features a subtle bit of community building, as the boy catches and returns a man's hat caught in the wind, helps quell a squalling baby, and corrals a trio of rambunctious brothers, all before finally returning the red cloth to its owner, on the rooftop. When he returns to the street, another red cloth appears and helps the shoe-shine boy stand out. Manning uses comics-style panels to good effect in this picture book, emphasizing height as the boy climbs up and up the building and varying perspectives throughout his vertiginous ascent. The hustle-and-bustle setting provides another visual treat, matched by the warm exuberance of the boy's neighborly adventure.--Chipman, Ian Copyright 2010 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-3-Reminiscent of the classic French film The Red Balloon (1956), this charming picture book with graphic-novel elements provides a visual tour of the young hero's teeming neighborhood in New York City. On laundry day, a bright red length of fabric drifts from a clothesline strung between the tenements, landing gently around the shoulders of a shoeshine boy. Business is slow, so he wraps the cloth around his neck and goes on a quest to find its owner. Accompanied by his orange striped cat, he travels from window to window, leading readers on a tour of his neighborhood. Each stop along the way provides a brief glimpse into the cultures of his Italian, Polish, Irish, Chinese, Ukrainian, and Jewish neighbors. At last, he climbs up to the roof of the building where the Jamaican seamstress, who sees everything, is waiting. She welcomes the boy with a grateful smile. The red scarf is not meant to be worn around the neck; it is the kindly woman's head scarf. She graciously thanks him and sends him along his way back down to the bustling streets. The dialogue is sprinkled with foreign phrases that are translated in a brief glossary. The atmospheric illustrations will draw in young readers and make them feel as if they are pushing their way through the crowded streets, climbing up fire escapes, and swinging from laundry lines along with the shoeshine boy. Pair this title with Ingrid and Dieter Schubert's wordless worldwide adventure, The Umbrella (Lemniscaat, 2011).-Linda L. Walkins, Mount Saint Joseph Academy, Brighton, MA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
(Picture book. 4-9)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
