Review by New York Times Review
EVERY children's book should be infused with emotion, starting with a sense of wonder. For me, the first great book of my childhood was "The Story of Babar," by Jean de Brunhoff, published in the United States in 1933. When I was 5, a year before Pearl Harbor, my mother showed me the book at the public library in my Brooklyn neighborhood. She told me decades later that when she saw the look on my face, she borrowed Babar and took us both home. We would borrow it, and its successors, many more times. The book has stayed with me all my life. Before I could decode the letters and words, I could follow the story through the drawings: the little elephant in the jungle, the killing of his mother by a gun-toting hunter, his wandering away from home with a broken heart and finding his way to a marvelous city. My mother called it Paris. Soon he met the Old Lady. He went to a tailor and chose a green suit, and soon he was learning to read. I read that first Babar book over and over again. The tale didn't make me into a colonialist (as later critics said it could). But ever since, I've hated guns and loved Paris. Reading these three excellent new picture books about New York City, "Balloons Over Broadway" "The Carpenter's Gift" and "Subway Story," I've tried to become a boy again, for just a little while; to read them with the innocent eyes of a child just learning to name the world. Impossible, of course. Among many reasons, I first read "Babar" in a world without television. No musical score told me what to feel. No laugh track urged me to giggle. When I opened "Babar," there were no spoken words at all, except those whispered by my mother, words from the pages of the book. Part of my growing sense of wonder surely rose from making those letters into spoken words. By myself. I do hope that many children open the pages of these books and feel something. I suspect that the emotions of New York children will not be the same as those who have never walked the streets of Manhattan. New Yorkers (and their parents) almost certainly will think: I didn't know that. But for those who live elsewhere, it might be: I wish I could go there. In "Balloons Over Broadway," Melissa Sweet tells the tale of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade through the life and career of a German immigrant named Tony Sarg, who moved to New York in 1915. Sarg was a gifted draftsman and a fine illustrator and cartoonist who was also passionate about toys and puppets. "He once said he became a marionette man when he was only 6 years old." His marionettes would eventually become essential to his American life and to the parade itself. Sweet's brilliant combination of collage, design, illustration and text gives "Balloons Over Broadway" an amazing richness. Children who can read will learn from written details, footnotes, instructions from Sarg himself. Younger children should be dazzled by the visual excitement of each spread. For parents and teachers, there is a bibliography and a note from the author that can help explain Sarg. None will ever see the parade in the same way. "The Carpenter's Gift" is more conventional in design and text, but it also tells a good story. The year is 1931, one of the worst of the Great Depression. A boy named Henry, who lives about an hour from New York City, joins his father in chopping some spruce trees and then taking them to sell in the big city. They travel in a borrowed truck, the boy filled with anticipation, since he has never before been in the city. They find their way to the site of the emerging Rockefeller Center. Some kind construction workers help them unload the trees. Father and son sell many trees, but not all, and decide to give them to the workers in gratitude for their help. The workers decorate the tallest tree, the first in Rockefeller Center, and when Henry goes home with his father, after making a wish for them to live in a warm house, he carries a pine cone with him. The following morning, he is awoken by car horns. The workers, touched by the father and son, have shown up, and then. ... Well, they return the kindness. Because this is a book about kindness, decency and memory, I'd rather not spoil the final movement. I LOVE the first sentence of "Subway Story" by Julia Sarcone-Roach, a Brooklyn-based author and illustrator: "When Jessie was born in St. Louis, Missouri, she weighed 75,122 pounds and was 51 and a half feet long." Obviously, the tale will be an exercise in the anthropomorphic. Ah, well: so, was "Babar." Jessie, the subway car, appears in the first spread, racing on elevated tracks from sunlight to deep blue night. We see her reacting to her passengers, to other trains, and crossing through tunnels under the East River. Time passes. Jessie is given new parts as old ones break down. Among other changes, she gets a paint job from the graffiti artists of the '60s and '70s. She works and she works and she works. But like most New Yorkers, she eventually starts running out of youthful energy. She is placed on furlough in the summertime, since she cannot supply enough air-conditioning, and the furlough becomes permanent. Sarcone-Roach guides us to Jessie's final destination with energy, style and charm. Only a subway rider (as the author most definitely is) could have imagined this book, and given us such a sustained sense of wonder. I hope many kids will spend some solitary time with each of these books. And maybe try "Babar" too. Pete Hamill, the author of more than 20 books, is a distinguished writer in residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Jessie is a New York City subway car who loves her job: carrying people (and the occasional Christmas tree or wedding cake) all over the city, accompanying subway musicians with clickety-clacks, zooming through subterranean tunnels. But what will become of Jessie when she's too old to refurbish and repair? The upbeat answer: Jessie becomes part of an artificial reef in the Atlantic Ocean, "And now a whole city lives inside her." Sarcone-Roach (The Secret Plan) so effectively portrays her heroine as an endearing, can-do machine that some readers may find Jessie's journey to the ocean floor genuinely alarming. Because Jessie has no idea what's happening to her, the pages that depict her being stripped of parts, loaded onto a boat full of anxious-looking subway cars, and dumped into the spooky depths of the ocean feel a bit like witnessing a mob hit. What's more, Jessie's sweet smile and eager eyes disappear once she becomes a reef; by erasing her personality and focusing on the aquatic life that takes up residence on and in Jessie, Sarcone-Roach ends with an obituary rather than a new beginning. Ages 5-9. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-3-This story of "Jessie," a subway car built in the early 1960s, was inspired by the author's trip to the New York Transit Museum and is a lovely tribute to the city and its boroughs. Told in a clever biographical format, the story begins with Jessie's "birth" details: weight, length, etc. The shiny, new car takes her responsibilities seriously as she safely carries children to school, adults to work, and friends and family members to visit one another. As the decades pass, Jessie delivers visitors to the 1964 World's Fair in Queens, is covered in graffiti, then painted red, repaired, and refurbished, including air-conditioning to replace outdated fans. Eventually, she is retired and becomes part of an artificial reef in the Atlantic Ocean, where she assumes her new job. The expressive acrylic illustrations set the tone and give the story depth. The features on the front of the subway car are used to make Jessie's eyes, nose, and mouth. An author's note gives details about the history of subway cars around the world. This title will be appreciated by train buffs and those curious about the history of New York City.-Anne Beier, Clifton Public Library, NJ (c) Copyright 2011. 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
Sarcone-Roach displays a discipline not always seen in books about the environment; she allows her theme of reuse and recycling to emerge naturally from a fine story and lets readers draw their own conclusions without adding a heavy-handed one of her own. Here youngsters meet Jessie, a subway car that begins service during the 1964 New York World's Fair and contentedly operates for approximately fifty years before she is dismantled. Jessie and other cars like her are hauled out to sea and, in a small scary moment (which is quickly resolved), dumped into the ocean. There she happily resides as an artificial reef that's home to myriad sea animals. Illustrations, unexpectedly cozy-looking, emphasize the story's tone. Structurally and artistically, the book recalls Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House (rev. 11/42) ("Over the years, Jessie saw the city change, and she had some changes of her own"): Jessie's half-century of traveling the city is depicted through a series of curved routes much like the streets and roads that close in on the Little House with the passage of time. Front end pages trace Jessie's original underground route; final ones show a peaceful, blue ocean where she now rests. An author's note describing the science behind similar projects and a bibliography conclude the book. betty carter (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
(Picture book. 3-6)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
