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Summary
Summary
Elsie is a city girl. She loves the noise of the cobbled streets of Boston. But when her mother dies and her father moves them to the faraway prairies of Nebraska, Elsie hears only the silence, and she feels alone in the wide sea of grass. Her only comfort is her canary, Timmy Tune. But when Timmy flies out the window, Elsie is forced to run after him, into the tall grass of the prairie, where she's finally able to hear the voice of the prairie-beautiful and noisy- and she begins to feel at home.
Jane Yolen and David Small create a remarkable, poetic, vividly rendered book about finding one's place in the world.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-4-Elsie, Boston born, loves the sounds and sights-and especially the songs-of the city, but when her mother dies, her father seeks comfort on the frontier of Nebraska. Her new prairie home is all grass and sky and silence and Elsie feels small and afraid. Her only companion, a going-away gift, is Timothy Tune, a canary with whom she exchanges songs throughout her solitary days. When the door to the cage is accidentally left open, Timothy flies free, and Elsie is devastated. Leaving her fears behind, she races through the tall grass to find him and begins to understand the sounds of the prairie and takes them to her heart. When Timothy sings his way back to her-just as her father returns from town with hens, a banty rooster, and a hound dog-Elsie realizes that, at last, she has found a "true prairie home." Yolen's evocative story, full of wonder and warmth, rolls smoothly along on carefully worded phrases, capturing the child's emotions as well as the flavor of the time and setting in a simple yet heartfelt way. Small's delivery, completely in sync with the author's, brings Elsie deftly to life. The illustrations, rendered in brush and ink with watercolor and pastel, realize both the streets of Boston and the grasslands of Nebraska with equal ease and aplomb.-Barbara Elleman, Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Amherst, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
When her grief-stricken, widowed father decides to leave Boston to be a pioneer farmer on the Nebraska prairie, Elsie wonders if she'll ever feel at home in the world again. Overwhelmed by "the grass and sky and silence," Elsie cloisters herself in the family's remote sod house. But one day her beloved canary escapes, and Elsie, forced to confront her surroundings, experiences an epiphany: she "finally heard the voices of the plains." Yolen's prose moves gracefully from solemn to euphoric as her young heroine embraces her adopted landscape ("She heard long vees of geese spinning out cries like thread; the creaking call of sandhill cranes.... She clapped her hands and sang back to them, too, skip-rope songs and sea shanties"). But the real draw lies in Small's deeply empathic treatment of his heroine, his unerring sense of composition and color, and, above all, his keen sensitivity to the emotional pull of place. Though Elsie doesn't immediately recognize the beauty of the plains, Small does, imbuing the windswept fields and Elsie's cozy sod house with all the vitality of her former home. Ages 5-8. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
What, after great loss, brings solace? Despite Mama's death years ago, Elsie has "a comfortable childhood" in her beloved Boston, where she can play street games with friends, listen to birdsong, and visit her grandparents. Papa, however, remains unconsoled; so when Elsie is eight, the two move to the Nebraska frontier. Now it's Elsie who's bereft. The sod-roofed house seems lonely and desolate, and her ear isn't tuned to the unfamiliar new voices -- the plains' birds, wind, water; she hears only her own weeping and the singing of her canary, Timmy Tune. Then Timmy escapes, and Elsie -- frantically following him into the tall grass -- loses her way, a potentially tragic mishap. However, Timmy finds her, and in that joyful moment she begins at last to listen to the voices of the plains. Finally, hearing Papa's frightened call, she follows it home to find a happy surprise: their menage now includes chickens and, best of all, a dog. Small's signature multimedia art is rendered here with impressionistic freedom: a melange of expressive broad strokes, delicate line, free-flowing color, expansive vistas, and subtle characterizations that reinforce and enhance the gentle, lyrical story's emotional impact. joanna rudge long (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
(Picture book. 4-10)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
After her mother dies, Elsie and her father leave Boston and join other pioneers making a fresh start in Nebraska. Once moved into a new sod house, Elsie feels housebound and timid, afraid to lose herself in the silence of the prairie, and she aches for the familiar life she left behind. She finds some comfort in singing with her pet canary, Timmy Tune, who escapes one day while Papa is shopping for supplies in town. Chasing Timmy through the sea of tall grass, Elsie listens to the songs of the wild prairie birds for the first time. When she returns home, she finds Papa, who has traded a quilt for a menagerie of new animals that, together with the wild birds, create a sweet symphony that turns her house into a true prairie home. Yolen's long text will require patience from young listeners, but Elsie's elemental feelings of dislocation and the words' sensory imagery bring immediacy to the historical setting and are beautifully realized in Small's mixed-media panoramas of the windswept prairie under a vast blue sky.--Engberg, Gillian Copyright 2010 Booklist