Little Blue Truck keeps on truckin’-but not without some backfires.įamilies in a variety of configurations play, dance, and celebrate together. The illustrations, done by Joseph in the style of original series collaborator Jill McElmurry, are pleasant enough, but his compositions often feel stiff and forced. Schertle’s verse, usually reliable, stumbles more than once stanzas such as “But Valentine’s Day / didn’t seem much fun / when he didn’t get cards / from anyone” will cause hitches during read-alouds. In this, Blue’s seventh outing, it’s not just the sturdy protagonist that seems to be wilting. Blue is therefore surprised (but readers may not be) when he pulls into his garage to be greeted by all his friends with a shiny blue valentine just for him. But as Blue heads home, his deliveries complete, his headlight eyes are sad and his front bumper droops ever so slightly. With each delivery there is an exchange of Beeps from Blue and the appropriate animal sounds from his friends, Blue’s Beeps always set in blue and the animal’s vocalization in a color that matches the card it receives. His bed overflowing with cards, Blue sets out to deliver a yellow card with purple polka dots and a shiny purple heart to Hen, one with a shiny fuchsia heart to Pig, a big, shiny, red heart-shaped card to Horse, and so on. Little Blue Truck feels, well, blue when he delivers valentine after valentine but receives nary a one. The metaphorical style is a brave change from the realism of Spinelli's other books, while fans of his earlier, tongue-in-cheek, streetwise tone will find it also an integral part of this story-ballast for the mythic, shifting picture of Maniac's year on the run
If this is sometimes a bit like a chalkboard lesson, it may be because racism is still a volatile subject that is more comfortably dealt with in parable form.
Innocently, he crosses between two strictly segregated parts of town, the white East End and the black West End, making friends and enemies in both camps and managing to soften the lines of segregation later, he finds a new home in the West. Jeffrey's subsequent yearlong flight generates a host of legends:, his sudden appearances and astonishing athletic prowess earn him the name "Maniac," and his just-as-sudden disappearances ensure his fame. Jeffrey Magee is twice homeless-once involuntarily, at age three, when his parents plunge with a high-speed trolley off a bridge the second time eight years later, when he voluntarily leaves the troubled home of his aunt and uncle. An occasionally long-winded, but always affecting, parable-like story about racism and ignorance.
0 kommentar(er)
