GARY PAULSEN (1939 - 2021) wrote nearly two hundred books for young people, including the Newbery Honor Books Hatchet, Dogsong, and The Winter Room.
K-Gr 3‘As they did in Tortilla Factory (Harcourt, 1995), the Paulsens have once again collaborated to celebrate the labors of common people. Gary Paulsen's brief rhyming text evokes the rhythm and sounds of a musical score as he pays homage to the "keening noises and jolting sights" of a carpenter at work on a new house or truckers on "one more nighttime run." Although the author mentions "offices filled with glowing screens," the occupations celebrated within these covers are not to be found in financial houses on Wall Street or among the corporate giants. Instead, he has looked to the streets outside the skyscrapers, into the small shops, classrooms, and factories that fill our cities and into the fields, highways, and markets that extend across the countryside. Here are the mothers and fathers of the majority of America's children. Ruth Wright Paulsen's impressionistic oil paintings extend the brief text into many worlds‘an ice-cream shop, a hairdressing salon, a library, and even under the sea. Individuals from many cultures carry on their daily work with great dignity, returning home to their families at the end of the day to rest and prepare to carry on the same refrain in the morning. Although the gender depictions are fairly traditional, the soft colors, spare text, and overall design of the book provide a song of praise to the unsung heroes in every child's world and to the simple satisfaction of a job well done.‘Barbara Kiefer, Teachers College, Columbia University, NY
From truck driver to cafeteria cook, from nurse to deep-sea diver‘"All the things there are to be" gather together in this gentle rhyming hymn to the dignity of work. Here, work is the common tie that binds, rather than the distinction that sets individuals apart. In both words and pictures, the efforts of people who spend themselves in everyday work muster a communal force‘whether it is a group of office workers at their "glowing screens," the truck-farming duo of father and daughter arranging their produce, or the solitary roofer. Gary Paulsen's couplets sometimes strike a whimsical note ("ice cream cones to lick and wear"), but more often touch the heart ("gentle arms that lift and hold,/ and all the soldiers brave and bold"). Ruth Wright Paulsen's textured, slightly muted oil paintings enrich the text and set off an emotional reverberation. Throughout, the subtlety of gestures (rather than facial expressions) and of concrete words (rather than feelings) keeps sentimentality at bay. Ages 4-8. (Apr.)
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