From there to here

Title:

From there to here

Author:

Croza, Laurel, author.

ISBN:

9781554983650

Personal Author:

Croza, Laurel, author.

Publication Information:

Toronto : Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, 2014.

Physical Description:

1 volume (unpaged) : color illustrations ; 24 cm

General Note:

Sequel to: I know here.

Abstract:

A young girl tries to adjust to moving from northeastern Saskatchewan to Toronto, where she misses her father coming home for lunch and looking at the stars at night with her family, but an eight-year-old girl from next door helps her to feel better.

Audience:

6-9.

P-2.

Subject Term:

Moving, Household -- Juvenile fiction.

Country life -- Juvenile fiction.

Geographic Term:

Saskatchewan -- Juvenile fiction.

Toronto (Ont.) -- Juvenile fiction.

Genre:

Picture books for children.

Added Author:

James, Matt, 1973- ,

Document ID:

SD_ILS:2172070

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Library	Collection	Collection	Call Number	Status
Searching... Fig Garden Branch (Fresno Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Children's Picture Book Area	C	Searching... Unknown
Searching... San Joaquin Branch (Fresno Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Children's Picture Book Area	C	Searching... Unknown
Searching... West Fresno Branch (Fresno Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Children's Picture Book Area	C	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Woodward Park Library (Fresno Co.)	Searching... Unknown	Children's Picture Book Area	C	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

A little girl and her family have just moved across the country by train. Their new neighborhood in the city of Toronto is very different from their home in the Saskatchewan bush, and at first everything about "there" seems better than "here."

The little girl's dad has just finished building a dam across the Saskatchewan River, and his new project is to build a highway through Toronto. In Saskatchewan, he would come home for lunch every day, but now he doesn't come until supper. The family used to love to look at the stars, and the northern lights dancing in the night sky. But in the city, all they can see is the glare from the streetlights. All the kids used to run and play together, but now older brother Doug has his own friends.

Then one day there is a knock on the door. It is Anne, who lives kitty-corner and is also eight, going on nine, and suddenly living in Toronto takes on a whole new light.

Laurel Croza and Matt James have beautifully captured the voice and intense feelings of a young child who, in the midst of upheaval, finds hope in her new surroundings.

Author Notes

Laurel Croza is the author of the picture book I Know Here, illustrated by Matt James. It won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award and the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, among many other accolades. She also wrote the sequel, From There to Here. The Whirlpool is Laurel's first short-story collection. She lives with her husband in Toronto.

Matt James is a painter, author/illustrator and musician whose many highly acclaimed children's books include Yellow Moon, Apple Moon by Pamela Porter (New Mexico Book Award); I Know Here by Laurel Croza (Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award) and its companion volume, From There to Here; and The Stone Thrower by Jael Ealey Richardson. Matt's illustrations for Northwest Passage, a stunning tribute to the iconic Stan Rogers song, won the Governor General's Literary Award. He also wrote and illustrated the highly acclaimed book The Funeral. Matt lives in Toronto.

Reviews (6)

Publisher's Weekly Review

In a lovely companion story to 2010's I Know Here, Croza's heroine and her family have settled in Toronto. While the girl's references to "here" meant their rural Saskatchewan dwelling in the previous book, Toronto is "here" for her family now, and their former home has become "there." Both locations bleed together in some of James's thickly painted images, emphasizing the central role they hold in the girl's mind and heart. Croza doesn't avoid the reality that some things were perhaps better in the country ("Here. No stars, no northern lights"), but readers will come to understand that while "here" and "there" are different, different is OK, especially when you have the support of a new friend. Ages 4-7. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Horn Book Review

In the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award-winning I Know Here (rev. 5/10), the young narrator knows she and her family will soon be leaving their home in the glorious wilderness of Saskatchewan, and in this sequel, so they do. The Toronto of the book's era (early 1960s) might look positively quaint to us, but to the girl it is completely exotic. "There" she lived on a gravel road without a name; "Here" she lives on the well-paved Birch Street. "There": the aurora borealis; "Here": "street lamps in a straight row." But just when you think the book is a paean to the forest primeval, in comes new neighbor Anne, "eight, almost nine" just like the girl, who back in the bush had no friend her own age. The palette of the Toronto scenes is predominately blue-sky sunny, reflecting the story's ultimate optimism, although the wild dark colors of the forest continue their hold on the girl's memories and in James's paintings, where images of moose and pine trees rest matter-of-factly within the confines of the girl's new house on Birch Street (birchless, by the way). While the bike helmets on Anne and our girl are more than a touch anachronistic, we know that the ride begun at the close of the book promises both amity and adventure. roger sutton (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

In this sequel to the author's I Know Here (2010), the transplanted girl begins to settle into her new home in urban Toronto, and she notices the differences between her old, rural home and this one: There. We lived on a road. A graveled and oiled road . . . Here. We live on a street. An asphalted and sidewalked street. James' expressive india-ink illustrations reveal what the little girl misses in her new place a small moose looks over her shoulder as she draws, and she clutches tiny conifers as she peers out a window. But for all the changes, there are nice things, too. She's not the only one in her class anymore, and there's a girl just her age who lives on her block. Now the differences don't seem so bad. The splotchy, colorful illustrations have a childlike quality, which is well suited to the young girl's simple words. Little ones struggling to adjust to a new home or missing their old one will find comfort here.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2014 Booklist

New York Review of Books Review

AS AMERICA'S POSTWAR baby boomers grew up, dipped a toe or more in child psychology studies at college and started families of their own, children's book publishers took note of a new, pop cultural sensitivity to a wide array of developmentally-based childhood trials and tribulations. Picture books about potty training, tantrum throwing, the death of a pet and other emotionally charged topics proliferated, and were often shelved together at the library under the catchall heading of "bibliotherapy." Some authors explored these concerns more artfully than others. Judith Viorst ("Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day") and the late Charlotte Zolotow ("The Hating Book," "William's Doll") proved to be masters of the genre, their dry-eyed wit, empathic touch and story-telling prowess easily a match for their good intentions. Postwar Americans' extreme mobility was bound to make the angst associated with moving house another bibliotherapeutic flash point, and at least two such books of recent years remain standouts: Marjorie Weinman Sharmat's tall-tale-ish "Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport," illustrated by Byron Barton, which catalogs - then dispels - a child's wildly exaggerated fears about his future home; and Bernard Waber's soulful "Ira Says Goodbye," a deft unpacking of the contradictory, bittersweet emotions felt by best friends who are being forced to part. New picture books continue to play out variations on this endlessly affecting theme. In "From There to Here," the Canadian writer Laurel Croza gives readers a free-standing sequel to the story she first told in her award-winning debut picture book, "I Know Here." The young girl who, in the earlier book, first dreads and then prepares herself for her family's relocation from the near wilderness of Saskatchewan to Toronto, now takes the measure of that change from the vantage point of her new home and enlarged perspective. Through a series of sensory-steeped, one-on-one contrasts called out and pictured on opposing pages, the girl (who also narrates) comes to realize that "different" is not necessarily "better" or "worse," and that she herself has the power to make her new surroundings not only acceptable but also satisfying. There is a travelogue aspect to Matt James's intensely hued expressionist paintings of the story's two locales. We are given just a few telling glimpses of Saskatchewan, as a child might piece them together in memory - a moose here, a raging brush fire there - and of Toronto's particular mix of small-town-like neighborhoods and grander structures. It is not a portrait, in the usual sense, of either place, yet readers will feel these immersive, dreamlike images have taken them somewhere far from home. In contrast, we never learn the whereabouts of Posy Peyton, the outspoken young protagonist of "The Good-Pie Party" - not where she lives or where she and her family are bound for - only that Posy would much rather stay where she is. Why wouldn't she? She has not just one but two best friends, with whom she happily bakes and does acrobatics. As pictured in Kady MacDonald Denton's casually elegant drawings, she lives in a nice house with nice toys and a pair of attentive parents. At 6 or 7, Posy has spread her wings and boldly embraced the world of her peers only to get slapped with the news that life can intrude in uncontrollable ways. She can perhaps be forgiven a moment of magical thinking as she stubbornly insists that by not saying "goodbye" to her friends she can keep their perfect world intact a while longer. The corny title pun points to the resilient plan with which Posy rebounds: her idea to host a farewell "good-pie" party for which she and her friends and family will bake the goodies, then gather for one last time. The book's author, Liz Garton Scanlon, suggests that young readers in Posy's predicament may likewise find it helpful to harness the comforting power of ritual in some such way. For Posy, it proves to be an inspired move. Lulling rhymes and rhythms reinforce the ritual impact of reading aloud Deborah Underwood's "Bad Bye, Good Bye" to a toddler or preschooler with a disruptive move on the horizon. Punched out in two-word bullet points, the text swiftly traces an emotional arc from anger at the initial chaos of packing ("Bad day/Bad box/Bad mop/Bad blocks"), to fitful curiosity and growing openness to change, and culminating in the welcome feeling of once again having securely settled in somewhere. On the text side, the action is played out in the adjectives, as the opening volley of one "bad" followed by another yields to a more finely nuanced and upbeat commentary: "Nice dog/Huge map/Smooth glass/Long nap." But if Underwood has plotted a young child's emotional crossing, Jonathan Bean ("Building Our House") has fleshed it out in subtly tinted, kinetic landscape scenes that have the richness of visual texture and dramatic incident of an adventure worth taking. Readers get to go along for the ride. Bean plays a nimble game with three-point perspective in these restless, shape-shifting graphics, in several of which he also introduces a sketchy, double-exposure-style under-layer of drawing meant to suggest the frazzled, out-of-sorts condition of being between homes. Seconding Underwood, he reassures the reader who may fear otherwise that the sharp pangs of displacement and loss brought on by a move do not last forever, not when there is so much else all around to see and be curious about. Points of interest dot the passing landscape of the long drive: windmills, water towers, grazing herds, an old-fashioned diner and kitschy road sign extravaganzas. The family's overnight at a motel comes with a refreshing swim and, better yet from the boy's perspective, an ice cube machine whose "on" lever is just the right height for him to operate. Young children do not often get to decide where they live, but they are old pros at choosing their own adventure when and where they can. As an avalanche of ice cubes comes clattering down, the boy with the satisfied grin who made it happen looks to be halfway home. LEONARD S. MARCUS is the author, most recently, of "Randolph Caldecott: The Man Who Could Not Stop Drawing" and the curator of the New York Public Library exhibition "The ABC of It: Why Children's Books Matter."

School Library Journal Review

K-Gr 3-This continuation of the author's I Know Here (Groundwood, 2010) contrasts the experiences of a girl who had been living in the wilds of Saskatchewan with those of her new life in Toronto. Her father's work in construction has brought about the move, and the stark differences in lifestyle drive the narrative: "There. We lived on a road...A road without a name. Here. We live on a street...Birch Street. I don't see any birch trees." There is a nostalgic tone to the spare text, as the girl recalls living in a trailer surrounded by nature's majesty and playing with the other workers' children who "traveled in a pack-all the kids, so long as we could keep up." Living in the city means asphalt and locked doors and streetlights dimming the stars, all factors that make the move more unsettling. The book can be read one its own but clearly works best as a companion title, for without its predecessor the girl's former life loses some of its emotional heft. For example, one needs to know that she was the only third grader in her one-room school in order to fully appreciate the neighbor Anne, who meets the moving truck the afternoon, they arrive and announces that she, too, is "Eight, almost nine." As in the first book, expressionistic acrylic and ink illustrations add depth to the story, as do the marvelous endpapers depicting a map of central Canada. A satisfying sequel to I Know Here.-Teri Markson, Los Angeles Public Library (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus Review

Following the spare, deeply felt I Know Here (2010), a just-moved child compares her old home in rural Saskatchewan to her new Toronto one. "It's different here," she begins. Instead of tall trees, the aurora borealis and trailers parked by the roadside, she sees tall buildings, lawns, streetlights and paved roads. There are other changes too: Her big brother can take a bus into town, and her father, working on a highway project rather than a dam, doesn't come home for lunch now. Using thickly daubed brushwork and roughly drawn figures to give his illustrations a childlike atmosphere, James echoes the child's ruminative observations with contrasting city and forest scenes. Though the city seems to suffer in comparison, a knock at the door brings one difference that casts all the others in a more positive light: a new friend who is also "[e]ight, almost nine." "It was different there," she concludes, with a subtle but significant shift of emphasis. "Not the same as here." Once again, a low-key, emotionally true approach to a common and usually upsetting childhood experience. (Picture book. 6-8)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Excerpts

"East. That's the direction we went -- from there to here -- all the way by train. Pulling out of Saskatoon, rattling faster and faster on the tracks, swaying everyone to sleep. Except me, my forehead pressed against the window, listening to the train whistle, "Gooooood-bye." * * * "There. A tarp of twinkle-twinkle little stars hung high above our trailers. And on some nights, a special show when aurora borealis shimmered in the sky, swirling and twirling, dancing just for us. Here. No stars, no northern lights. The street lamps all in a row -- standing attention -- glaring down the dark." * * * "Here. Anne and me on our bikes -- down our street, through the church parking lot, past the apartment buildings, towards Yonge Street and lunch at The Red Barn -- pedaling faster and faster, the Toronto air rushes to greet me, tugging up the corners of my mouth. Anne is smiling, too." Excerpted from From There to Here by Laurel Croza All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.