Review by New York Times Review
NEW YORK CITY has long held pride of place as an inspiration for American picture books. It's not just that so many writers, illustrators and publishers live and work in New York. The city occupies a special niche in the nation's imaginative landscape as an unparalleled concentration of biggests, boldests and bests; as a world crossroads; as a place where dreams come true. The very first such illustrated book for young readers, Samuel Wood's "New-York Cries" (1808), wrapped a slim collection of peddlers' traditional rhymes and chants in a thinly veiled warning: study hard and live right or risk ending up selling apples on the street, or worse. Later books replaced ham-fisted lesson-mongering with a kinder, gentler attitude informed by modern psychology and progressive education. Hardie Gramatky's "Little Toot" (1939) - an edition has just appeared to mark the artist's birth centenary - conveyed the message that wee tugboats (and by analogy small children) have a role to play in the daunting world of great ships and grown-ups. Kay Thompson and Hilary Knight's "Eloise" (1955) reimagined the Plaza as a precocious 6-year-old's personal playground. "The House on East 88th Street," "In the Night Kitchen," "The Snowy Day," "The Man Who Walked Between the Towers": the list goes on, the genre having, if anything, gained new momentum in the emotional aftermath of 9/11. One happy consequence of all this interest is the reintroduction of "The Castle on Hester Street," Linda Heller's zestful tale of Russian-Jewish immigration at the turn of the last century, in a 25th-anniversary edition with robust new illustrations by the Russian émigré artist Boris Kulikov. Loving grandparents, Rose and Sol, vie for young Julie's attention as they give wildly contrasting accounts of their Old World departures and New York arrivals. Sol, the dreamer, speaks of dockside greetings from President Teddy Roosevelt and of living like a king on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Rose, the realist, recalls cramped quarters and long hours of piecework. Both versions of the past, Heller suggests, contain a kernel of truth. Together, they make a palpable family legacy: one part bitter, one part sweet, all worth remembering. For decades, the Lower East Side served as the city's principal melting pot. But New York has always been dotted with outposts where subcultures jostle and mix. Ted Lewin takes readers inside one of them in his new book, "At Gleason's Gym," about the storied training ground for fighters like Muhammad Ali and Jake La Motta. Thai kickboxers and a Russian girl are among the regulars who receive passing nods in a narrative that opens with Sugar Boy Younan, a real 9-year-old, as a fighter to watch. Lewin, who comes from a family of professional wrestlers, has the chops as a watercolorist and draftsman to convey the fever-pitch action in Gleason's, which occupies a sprawling loft near the Brooklyn Bridge. Boxing prowess may not be everyone's dream. But who would dispute Sugar Boy's father's larger goal for his son: "a good brain in a good body"? New York's occasionally mean streets suddenly seemed less so when in the early 1990s possibly the first-ever red-tailed hawks breezed into town, nesting and mating in the upper reaches of a Fifth Avenue high-rise. Marie Winn, a journalist, gave a memorable account of the tale for adult readers in "Red-Tails in Love (1998). It was only a matter of time before the story made its way into books for young readers. This spring brought Jeanette Winter's "Tale of Pale Male," and now there is Meghan McCarthy's "City Hawk." McCarthy gets off to a shaky start with a stage-setting reference to Central Park as the "city's largest park" (Pelham Bay Park is three times the size), then struggles to find a story line in all the fascinating facts, a great many of which have ended up in a note at the back of the book. Her very appealing, broad-brush illustrations have better focus, ranging effortlessly from goofy to grand, registering many a curious detail of architectural ornamentation and casual-chic park wear. Not to mention those natty lovebirds' bedroom eyes! Back to Brooklyn: a couple of years ago, Mo Willems gave an uproarious account of a tantrum thrown in the streets of Park Slope by a vibrant preverbal child who had just lost her inseparable friend, a stuffed toy rabbit named Knuffle Bunny. In "Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity," a slightly older Trixie returns as an engaging chatterbox, only to suffer another rude awakening when a classmate comes to preschool clutching a bunny identical to her own "one of a kind" companion. Bad tempers are the predictable result of the egocentrism-smashing revelation, and more fireworks ensue with the accidental switching of the two rabbits by the teacher, and the traumatic discovery of the mix-up at 2:30 a.m. Willems has a brilliant knack for exposing early childhood's developmental pivot points, and for lampooning the best efforts of today's hip but hapless parents to do the right thing. In the artist's computer-manipulated graphics, manically wired and warmhearted cartoon characters rendered in color play out their workaday dramas against a backdrop of black-and-white photographs of neighborhood streets and interiors. Beyond the novelty of the special effect lies the stirring truth that the city that never sleeps is a self-regenerating, nonstop theater of becoming, a place where on any given day, amid huge skyscrapers and venerable brownstone blocks, two new friends may decide to draw their own favorite bunnies on the nearest sidewalk for all the world to see. Leonard S. Marcus's "Golden Legacy: How Golden Books Won Children's Hearts, Changed Publishing Forever and Became an American Icon Along the Way" will be published this month.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Featuring similarly spare paintings as Jeanette Winters's The Tale of Pale Male: A True Story, McCarthy's (Aliens Are Coming!) book covers much of the same turf-and air space-as that spring release. McCarthy concisely chronicles the true, reportedly unprecedented occurrence of two red-tailed hawks' construction of a nest in the cornice of a swanky apartment building on Manhattan's Upper East Side. From nearby Central Park, a group of bird-watchers who called themselves "the Regulars" vigilantly followed Pale Male and Lola's every move and rejoiced when two chicks hatched. The other headline-grabbing aspect of these hawks' tale-the building's residents, irked by the birds' messy habits, successfully lobbied to get the nest removed, then, in response to passionate protests, reversed their decision-is explained in a lengthy author's note. Combining vibrant and earth tones, McCarthy's unadorned acrylic illustrations have a puckish quality, both her human and winged characters incarnated as amiable bug-eyed creatures who express themselves through the slant of their mouths (or tilt of their beaks). A portion of the proceeds from sales of this book will benefit New York City Audubon. Ages 4-8. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 3-This delightful picture book provides a glimpse into the world of excited bird watchers as Pale Male (so named because of his light feathers) became the first documented red-tailed hawk to make New York City his home, in 1991. Though the text is minimal, McCarthy deftly conveys the thrill of onlookers as they realized that the hawk was planning to stay, not merely stop off in Central Park as thousands of migrating birds do each year. As people watched day after day through telescopes and cameras, Pale Male took a mate (Lola) and the birds assembled a nest on a ledge of a Fifth Avenue building overlooking the park. After the eggs hatched, admirers waited breathlessly for the babies to learn to fly. The acrylic paintings offer an identifiable Manhattan, complete with beautiful soft colorations depicting seasonal changes and the birds' muted plumage. Whimsy and lighthearted touches-the huge bug eyes of humans and hawks alike, the expressive faces of Pale Male and Lola, and individualized depictions of the "Regulars" (the most-dedicated observers)-keep things appealing to young readers. An appended section on Central Park and an author's note offer fascinating background and historical information. The theme of nature nurtured in our big cities is one of hope and renewal, making this title a must for all collections.-Lynne Mattern, Robert Seaman School, Jericho, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(Preschool, Primary) Here's yet another account of the stir created when New York City's red-tailed hawks nested high on an upscale faìade overlooking Central Park (see also Jeanette Winter's Tale of Pale Male, rev. 3/07). Where Winter's book was concerned with the birds' needs and behavior, McCarthy focuses on the city and its people. "After Pale Male was sighted near a pond in Central Park, flying over the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and by a hot-dog stand, it was clear that he was there to stay." Omitting the drama of the building owners' removal of the nest and its reinstatement, she details the delight of faithful birdwatchers, depicting them (rather comically) as pop-eyed -- as are her hawks. The liveliness of these caricatures and McCarthy's rough yet evocative rendering of the city contrast significantly with Winter's elegant stylized forms; many libraries may wish to have both books. City Hawk includes a lengthy bibliography, heavy on newspaper accounts; a page of information about Central Park; and a long author's note that extends both the natural and the social history. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The year's second book to shine the spotlight on New York City's most famous red-tailed hawk provides fun images but misses the narrative mark. McCarthy populates her illustrations with her characteristically pop-eyed cartoon people, here joined by comically round-eyed hawks. The text details the appearance of Pale Male in Manhattan, his romance with Lola and the subsequent building of their nest and the hatching and fledging of their chicks. The avid attention paid to these urban hawks by the city's birdwatching community receives some attention as well, but aside from some uncertainty about the ability of the chicks to fly across the street to the park (which they do in the middle of the night), there's no narrative tension to enliven the plot. Inexplicably, the story avoids the stuff-of-legends conflict with the hawk-hating residents of 927 Fifth Avenue that Jeanette Winter chronicles so successfully in The Tale of Pale Male (March 2007). Although this story appears in the lengthy author's note (along with a "Learn More About Central Park" featurette and a jam-packed bibliography), its curious absence from the body of the text leaves readers with little to care about. (Picture book/nonfiction. 4-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
