Review by New York Times Review
A master of haiku, Issa (born in 1763) wasn't blessed with an "easy or happy" life, according to the artist's note at the beginning of this affecting picture book. Karas chose 16 of Issa's plain-spoken poems and arranged them by season. "Once snows have melted, / the village soon overflows / with friendly children" reads the first. "Here / I'm here - / the snow falling" reads one of the last. The pictures, in muted tones, may work too hard to supply a story - images of a hospital and a graveyard tell us the stooped grandfather from the early pages has passed on - but on the whole they complement the haunting simplicity of Issa's art. A debut that brings a much-needed twist to the mystery/fantasy genre with its wisecracking detective hero, who happens to be a living skeleton (well, not technically living, he admits). A regular Sam Spade, Skulduggery can trade punches with vampires, Cleavers and Faceless Ones while keeping up the banter with his human partner, the "darkly talented" Stephanie, whose legacy from a late uncle includes a fortune and otherworldly beings trying to kill her. It's a little hard to buy 12-year-old Stephanie's survival in the face of fangs, oozing tentacles and plain old guns. Still, the author just may have invented a new genre: the screwball fantasy. The dynamic design of this picture book complements the over-the-top creativity of its unnamed protagonist. The "17 things" she is not allowed to do - including stapling her brother's hair to his pillow, writing about a beaver for a class project instead of George Washington and showing "Joey Whipple my underpants" - are rendered in energetic pen-and-ink and digital images: young readers will enjoy noticing that the background to the Joey Whipple spread is a rainbow assortment of pastel panties. In colorful mixed media collage, Lee (who was born in Seoul but now lives in Houston) presents a fanciful visit to a psychedelic zoo where a monkey perches on a smiling hippo and a peacock sports a tail of vivid purple pastel. Unfortunately Mom and Dad are thrown into a panic when their young daughter, in pink cape and boots, wanders after the peacock, imagining herself playing with a bear in a flamingo pool. Clearly it's all in the eye of the beholder. At the end, the girl's "I love the zoo. It's very exciting" is comically set against Mom and Dad looking chalkwhite with fatigue. Lee's view of the parents is almost depressing - when they're not panicking, they look bored literally to death - but the gorgeous menagerie that bursts out at the end restores the child's-eye point of view. A favorite writing exercise here becomes an enjoyable anthology of whimsical poems on every imaginable subject - snowflakes, softboiled eggs, bees, "hat hair." With the exception of Ogden Nash ("Tell me, O Octopus, I begs, / Is those things arms, or is they legs?"), the usual celebrities of American poetry are absent, leaving room for newer pleasures. "Dear shell: / You curve extremely well. / And when I put you to my curving ear / and hear a whispered wind / far off / I cannot tell but it might be the sea," Karla Kuskin writes in "Dear Shell." Keeping in mind her audience, she adds, "Dear shell: / You also smell." JULIE JUST
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Karas uses the haiku of the eighteenth-century Japanese poet Issa to limn a gentle, understated tale of one family over a year. The translations, from several different but fairly recent sources, do not always hew to the traditional syllabic format of haiku, but they are simply and clearly crafted. The poems begin in spring with parents, two children, a dog, and a grandfather. Just being alive! / --miraculous to be in / cherry blossom shadows! The grandfather is in his chair under the cherry tree, peeling an orange in his lap. In the next image, Today and today / also--a kite entangled / in a gnarled tree, he rescues his grandson's kite from the cherry blossoms. Karas' art, using rice paper, paint, and pencil, is precise, enticing, and evocative: one panel echoes van Gogh's Starry Night. As autumn begins, Grandfather sits in a field of golden mums, but when trees are bare, the chair is empty, and in falling snow the family, less one, visits the cemetery. Spring comes again, though, and the small daughter now sits in grandfather's chair under the cherry tree. In a note, Karas explains that like Issa's haiku, he tries to convey the precise feeling of each moment. He succeeds beautifully. --GraceAnne DeCandido Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Issa's elegant haiku and Karas's poignant illustrations guide readers through the seasons, symbolized by the changing branches of a cherry blossom tree. The translations of 18 works from several of the 18th-century Japanese poet's volumes come together in this collection like delicate beads, tiny moments common to us all. Meanwhile the illustrations follow the lives of a specific fictional family. Although death is never mentioned in the text, the beginning of the book shows an elderly man sitting peacefully on a chair as a father helps his son untangle a kite from the tree ("Just being alive!/ -miraculous to be in/ cherry blossom shadows!"). By winter, that chair is empty and, a few pages later, the family assembles in the cemetery ("Here/ I'm here-/ the snow falling"). In a hopeful spread, a child sits in the once-empty chair beneath flowering branches ("As simple as that-/ spring has finally arrived/ with a pale blue sky"). Small human figures appear against richly textured landscapes, as if underscoring the powerful cycle of nature. The view inside a house through a screened window, golden leaves streaming across the lawn like moonlight, and stars ringed in a midnight blue sky ? la Van Gogh-"whispering to each other"-all act as touching backdrops for universal events. Combining various paper textures with both paint and pencil drawings, Karas creates a memorable feast of images that portray both the joy and sorrow of existence. Ages 4-8. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-6-This poignant meditation about death combines 18th-century haiku with Karas's illustrations made with rice paper, wood planks, and pencils, and done in a muted palette. The book is divided by season, with each section announced by a painting of a cherry branch. Karas has imagined a family, and it is their poignant tale that commands readers' attention. The family members share those moments when time appears to stand still: "The spring day/lingers/in the pools" and, during a summer night, "even the stars/are whispering to each other." Children will be able to make inferences through the many symbols within the book: the grandfather is offered a chair at the beginning; in autumn, he is seen with a blanket over his lap; and just before the close of autumn, an empty chair is followed by a lifeless sprig of cherry tree weighted by snow. A winter scene shows the small family in a cemetery. The story comes full circle with the last page showing the child outside, with the same cherry branch in full bloom.-Teresa Pfeifer, Alfred Zanetti Montessori Magnet School, Springfield, MA (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 Horn Book Review
(Primary) Eighteen haiku by the famous Japanese poet are arranged to tell about one year in the life of a contemporary family. Karas divides the poems into four seasonal sections, illustrating each haiku with single- or double-page spreads: kids and dog playing, mom and dad doing yard work, grandfather sitting in a chair on the lawn (""Just being alive! / -miraculous to be in / cherry blossom shadows!""). With its images of nature, traditional haiku is perfect for this story, which, it turns out, is also about the cycle of life. A picture of an empty chair on the lawn closes the autumn section; winter finds the children gazing out a hospital window, then visiting a cemetery with their parents, fat snowflakes drifting down. The final haiku (""As simple as that- / spring has finally arrived / with a pale blue sky"") is illustrated by a picture of the young girl sitting in her grandfather's chair beneath the cherry blossoms, a small smile on her face. Like haiku, Karas's art captures moments in time and conveys, with color and light, sensory detail such as the look and feel of a hot summer night or a bright autumn morning. This contemplative and lushly illustrated picture book will be useful in classrooms, with the storytelling aspect of the poems and art adding a new dimension to the usual study of the haiku form. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
