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Summary
Summary
Library-friendly edition. From the #1 New York Times bestselling creative team of Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Cornell comes a timely picture book about immigration. Raising important identity issues like "Where did we come from?" and "Who are we?" This Is Me is as delightful as it is important, sure to stimulate dinner table conversation.
In This Is Me a teacher tells her class about her great-grandmother's dislocating journey from home to a new country with nothing but a small suitcase to bring along. And she asks: What would you pack? What are the things you love best? What says "This is me!" With its lively, rhyming language and endearing illustrations, it's a book to read again and again, imagining the lives of the different characters, finding new details in the art, thinking about what it would be like to move someplace completely different.
Author Notes
Jamie Lee Curtis was born in Los Angeles, California in 1958. She is the child of Hollywood legends Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. She began her film career with such horror films as "Halloween" and "The Fog." In 1983 she starred in "Trading Places" with Eddie Murphy and she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She became recognized as a comedic actress. In 1994 she won a Golden Globe award for her role in "True Lies."
In 1993 she began writing children's books with her illustrator, Laura Cornell. Two of her New York Times Best Sellers are, My Brave Year of Firsts: Tries, Sighs, and High Fives, in 2012 and This is me: A Story of Who We Are and Where We Came From, in 2016.
She has been married to Christopher Guest since 1984. The couple has two adopted children, Anne Hayden Guest and Thomas Hayden Guest. She resides in California
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 1-Many children have family members who have immigrated to the United States, and many have had an occasion to fill an overnight bag. Here, a teacher whose great-grandmother came from afar asks her young students to imagine packing a suitcase when you must leave behind most of what you love and care about. "How would you know/in this case what to pack/and that once you had left/there'd be no coming back?" The full meaning of that question and the leap from the experience of a parent or grandparent to oneself are likely to be difficult for the book's audience. While children will relate to the diverse characters' full-of-stuff rooms and the items they choose to pack (dolls, "a first-in-line-ticket" to a Katy Perry show, LEGOs, a camera, a karate gi), their responses undermine the gravity of the question and the plight and flight of many who have come to the United States. Ultimately, the book delivers a positive spin on immigration, while throwing in a few additional messages, including that your suitcase may be "your own history book" but it is not who you are or will be. Cornell's opening watercolor images of an émigré family are rendered in delicate muted sepia tones, while the contemporary scenes blossom into full detail and color. The last spread features a foldout suitcase, ready for the filling. VERDICT Too many messages, delivered in sometimes limp verse, don't do justice to the topics broached.-Daryl Grabarek, School Library Journal © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Frequent collaborators Curtis and Cornell ask kids to contemplate what they would bring if they had to move to another country. "How would you know/ in this case what to pack/ and that once you had left/ there'd be no coming back," a teacher says to her students, who list what they would include in their suitcases. Curtis keeps the story current (but also dates it) with references to items like prized Katy Perry tickets and a Nintendo DS; while the meter is solid enough, the rhymes can be somewhat forced ("Great work, Elena,/ for the time that you took./ This suitcase is like/ your own history book"). Cornell's cheery ink-and-watercolor images create a friendly, diverse cast of kids, and a pop-up suitcase invites readers to consider what objects best represent them. Ages 4-8. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
An Asian American teacher tells her diverse students about the items her immigrant great-grandmother brought to the U.S.; she invites each student to list the objects he or she would pack (and readers are invited to fill a pop-up suitcase at book's end). Curtis's sunny messages about immigration, identity, and familial roots buoy the unremarkable rhymes. Cornell's watercolors are filled with zany details. (c) Copyright 2017. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
In an American schoolroom, children of different ethnicities gather around Great-Grandmother's suitcase. What would she have packed in that small brown case for her one-way trip to another land? A family photo album? Ribbons for her hair? In large, bright blue letters, this asks, What would YOU take? The teacher offers the children a chance to take the suitcase home. Colorful, detailed spreads in watercolor and ink accompany rhymed couplets one child ponders, Could he take Digglet, his rat, or Dad's hand-carved bat? Other ideas bubble up as each child's page reveals their treasures: punk rocker Barbie, a ukulele, a USA passport, a baby-tooth tin, a karate gi. The lesson? Who you become STARTS with your past, family histories and stories that last. The surprising final endpaper is a large paper-engineered foldout suitcase for a child to stuff with the things they love best. Artwork is energetic and humorous, especially the oversize child's face in Groucho Marx glasses. This eleventh collaboration from a popular author-illustrator team celebrates the diversity of America. A library-friendly edition without the pop-up page will be published simultaneously.--Gepson, Lolly Copyright 2016 Booklist