Skip to main content

Laundry Day

By
Laundry Day
by Maurie J. Manning
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012
unpaged picture book

A young shoeshine boy wanders through the bustling streets of turn-of-the-century New York City. Disheartened when no one wants a shine, the little boy slumps down on the sidewalk. A piece of red cloth floats down from the sky landing on his shoulders immediately lifting his spirits as well as his curiosity. Peering up at the many lines of laundry strung between the buildings he decides to go in search of the owner of the  beautiful red fabric. As he climbs the fire-escapes he asks all he encounters if they are the owners of the cloth. Each person he visits represents a different culture, age and occupation. When he reaches the top of the building and discovers where the red scarf came from he is in for a pleasant surprise, and a reward. This beautiful picture book depicts the melting-pot community that helped make New York City what it is today. The layout of the book is very appealing as well: some pages are in panels like a graphic novel, others are wordless, telling the story just with the illustrations and the perspectives drawn show literally every angle of the street possible. It would be great to see this title on the Caldecott list next year!
 
Labels:

Comments

booklady said…
I loved this book as well. Each picture is a delight to linger over and examine in all its many details. A touch of mystery, and lots of fun.
September 22, 2012 at 11:00 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall

By
A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall By Jasmine Warga New York: Harper, 2024. Fiction. 211 pages. A painting has been stolen from the Penelope L. Brooks Museum and sixth-grader Rami Ahmed is worried he's the main suspect. His mother works at the museum as the lead custodian and Rami spends a lot of time hanging out at the museum while she works. On the day the painting went missing, the only people there were the security guard Ed, the cleaning crew, and Rami. Then, a mysterious girl appears in the museum. She floats around from room to room and only Rami can see her -- and she looks exactly like the girl from the missing painting. To prove his innocence and help figure out who the floating girl is, Rami partners up with an aspiring sleuth at school named Veda and the two dive into unexpected situations as they try to solve the mystery. This is a cozy mystery that is focused mostly on characters and ambiance and only a little on the mystery itself. Don't read this book if yo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Amazing Generation

By
The Amazing Generation: Your Guide to Fun and Freedom in a Screen-Filled World Written by Jonathan Haidt and Catherine Price  Illustrated by Cynthia Yuan Cheng New York: Rocky Pond Books, 2025. Informational. 226 pages.  In a kid-friendly adaptation of his best-selling book, The Anxious Generation , Jonathan Haidt teams up with Catherine Price, author of How to Break Up With Your Phone , to bring the power of good information directly to the hands of those that this issue affects most directly — kids on the cusp of getting their own smartphones. The book presents information about the drawbacks of having a smartphone and social media too soon in clear and easy-to-understand language, with eye-catching graphics and pop-outs. Throughout the book, quotes from real teens and young adults, called screen "rebels" by the authors, emphasize the points the authors are trying to make. Fictional characters are featured throughout in a graphic novel story, which further emphasizes the po...
Post a Comment
Read more