Review by Booklist Review
With a mix of mayhem and hands-on facts about daily work, this I Can Read! book tells a lively story of farm life before electricity came. The Just-So Woman is neat and orderly, but when she runs out of butter, soap, and other things, she asks her messy neighbor, the Any-Way Man, for help. He finds a bullet mold, not a butter mold, then shows her that bread doesn't always need butter; it's delicious when it's dunked in tea. The farm woman's exclamations are fun (Oh, drat! Oh, applesauce ), and Manning's colorful cartoon-style pictures show the silly slapstick mess close-up, including a smug cat, a glaring cow, and a nest of mice in the Just-So Woman's hat. --Hazel Rochman Copyright 2006 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 2-In a time before electricity, the Just-So Woman lives on a farm and encounters a number of stumbling blocks during a typical day. She has no butter for her morning bread, the stool is broken so she can't milk the cow, her cat licks the spoon she is using, and she is out of soap for washing. Since everything in her life must be "just-so," she ends up eating nothing until suppertime, when her neighbor, the Any-Way Man, convinces her to simply enjoy her bread without butter, dipped in tea. The writing in this beginning reader is as uninteresting as the Just-So Woman's day. "She feeds the cat. She feeds the cows and chickens. Then she fixes her breakfast. She brews some mint tea. She cuts a thick slice of bread. But there is not a bit of butter." The illustrations, which appear to be done in watercolors, capture the era and add some charm, but overall the Just-So Woman's story is just so-so.-Melinda Piehler, Sawgrass Elementary School, Sunrise, FL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
This level-three title in the I Can Read series introduces new readers to a fastidious female homesteader and her "devil-may-care" male neighbor. When she finds no butter for her breakfast bread, the Just-So Woman sets about making more. One complicated thing leads to another: Her milking stool breaks, her hatchet needs sharpening and she must make soap to wash the cream spoon, which the cat licked. Exhausting herself with many self-imposed tasks, the woman borrows salt and a butter mold from the Any-Way Man, only to find that her hungry cat has eaten every bit of the fresh butter. Blackwood deftly integrates a sense of the rigors of homesteading life into the easy-reader format. He hints at a possible romance--or at least, a blossoming friendship--between the Any-Way Man and the Just-So Woman, intimating that each will benefit from understanding the other's modus operandi. Manning's illustrations nimbly incorporate the story's rustic, old-timey elements while rendering the characters in child-appealing, cartoonish forms. (author's note) (Easy reader. 5-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
