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The Fishing Summer
Teddy Jam. Illustrated by Ange Zhang.
Subject Heading: Review by Valerie Nielsen. **** /4
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excerpt:
When I was a boy my three uncles lived in a big wooden house by the sea...On Sundays they would do the laundry and hang their white shirts out on the line, where they would flap in the wind like big raggedy gulls ... Every summer my mother would take me there for a visit.
So begins The Fishing Summer, by Teddy Jam, nom de plume
for a well-known writer and author of Night Cars and ALA Notable
book, The Year of Fire. His latest picture book is a nostalgic
account of a special summer in the life of an eight-year-old boy.
Naturally the boy yearns to go out fishing with his uncles, and,
just as naturally, his mother is afraid her son will fall in and be
drowned. One night, too excited to sleep, our young hero steals
down to the boat, climbs into the cabin and falls asleep. When he
awakes next morning to the sound of hammering motors, he is teased
by his uncles who call him a stowaway and threaten to throw him
overboard. Despite a watery mishap, that first day out on the
water is a glorious beginning to his summer of fishing. On the
last evening before the boy and his mother return home, the uncles
"...toasted me and said how I'd become a real fisherman. Uncle
Thomas gave me a drink of his coffee. It was bitter and it was raw
and it was sweet. It was the taste of that summer and I never lost
it."
The author has passed on that taste to his readers, creating characters of humour and strength who are brought to life by the bold and bright portraits of artist Ange Zhang. In the same way, Zhang's beautiful oil paintings of the Atlantic seacoast capture the sights, sounds and smells of that part of the world. Both reader and young listener are in for a treat as they share this bittersweet memoir of a way of life that has disappeared forever.
Highly recommended.
Valerie Nielsen is the teacher-librarian at Bairdmore Elementary School in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.
Copyright © 1997 the Manitoba Library Association. Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without permission.
Published by
The Manitoba Library Association
ISSN 1201-9364
TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR THIS ISSUE - OCTOBER 3, 1997.
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