On the inside looking out

The Hello, Goodbye Window

by Norton Juster; illustrated by Chris Raschka

Oh, my aching shelves. Holding all those books make them creak more than my 42-year-old bones. I never seem to get to all the books I'd like to review, but then some of them don't need my help, I guess.

Take this one, for example. It just won the Caldecott medal, the highest honor for a picture book. I planned on reviewing it someday soon. Okay, now. Why not? I still have it on hand, and the 2006 books are only just starting to arrive.

Every now and then, an author perfects a character's voice and we can jettison the need for a plot. Just spending time with this fictional person is good enough. In adult novels, 300 pages can seem a bit long for nothing to happen. But in a kid's book, it's a shame to get to the end pages.

This powerhouse duo -- Juster wrote "The Phantom Tollbooth" and Raschka's a previous Caldecott honoree -- capture a little girl so well, you'd swear she was speaking to you. Or rather, shouting, in that gleeful way kids do when they forget about their "inside voice."

In the morning the first place we go is back to the kitchen, and there's the window waiting for us. You can look out and say good morning to the garden or see if it's going to rain or be nice.

And you can see if the dog next door is doing stuff in Nanna's flower beds. She hates that!

Even the art looks like a kid smudged and smooshed finger paints, watercolors and blobs of primary colors to conjure up a day at her grandparents, whose kitchen window looks out on the world. It's special only because the little girl thinks it so, and the source of its magic comes from the loving faces it reflects.

Bonus points for a multi-racial family, but really, get this one because it doesn't merely sing so much as jump up and down and giggle.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

Comments

[Susan]

Anne, I'm with you. This one is lots of fun. My son and I love it. Plus, we've discovered a "hello, goodbye window" in our own house.

[Anne]

Unfortunately, our kitchen window only looks out on our overgrown back yard. :-)

[brettdl]

If you don't open the windows, you would think our back yard was a forest. But when you open the window, the sounds of a noisy freeway lead to visions of cars crashing.