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Our Price: $6.99
Product Details
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| Shipping Weight: |
0.50 |
| Author(s): |
Patricia Polacco |
| Vendor: |
PUTNAM PENGUIN |
| Publisher: |
Putnam Juvenile |
| Published: |
20 May, 1997 |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0698115902 |
| Store Code: |
8689 |
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Genre: Bedtime and Dreams; Juvenile Fiction / Bedtime and Dreams; Children: Kindergarten; Dreams; Children's Books/Ages 4-8 Fiction; Fiction; Imagination;
Average Review: 4 stars
Review: 4 1/2* Painting the Town : Appelemando lives in a town so dreary that he likes to daydream. But unlike other children, his dreams spill out of his head in bright colors, coloring the drab landscape around him. Furthermore, his young friends accidentally discover that wet objects will hold these color daydreams. However, on a rainy day, his dreams literally paint the town red, and blue, and yellow, and green.Up to this point, the story is exciting and the illustrations, richly shaded in a slight change from Polacco's more typical style, accurately portray both the drab and the bright. But halfway through, the story turns to a lost children motif, and, somewhat predictably, Appelemando's ability to color the sky leads to their rescue. There's a nice message here about having friends who believe in you and the importance of dreaming, but both the narrative and the pictures are a bit too uninspired for someone of Polacco's enormous talent. The dream that rescues the wanderers is bright enough, but not varied enough.... just designs that spell out "Help Us." and more pictures of animals and smallish abstract shapes. A 5 for any other author, but relative to Polacco's other book, this merits only a 4. Take a look at "Casey at the Bat," "Picnic at Mudsock Meadow," "Thunder Cake," the `Babushka' series, and many others to get a truer picture of Polacco's magnificence.
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