Anna's Corn - Hardcover

Delicately overlapping themes about the cycles of life, Santucci (Loon Lake) crafts a memorable, touching story about the death of a girl's much-loved grandfather. Grandpa teaches Anna that the corn in his fields makes "its own kind of music" and he shows her how to hear it, too: "A sudden gust of wind breathed through the dried corn stalks until a song formed. A raspy song, like Grandpa's voice." Grandpa gives Anna some kernels, and that winter, as he lays ill, he makes her promise to plant them. Shortly afterward he dies, and Anna wrestles with her promise. "If I bury them, they'll be gone forever," she tells her mother. Bloom (A Man Named Thoreau) contributes some of his most affecting work yet, rendering his soulful, folksy compositions in a restrained blend of graphite, watercolor pencils and pastels. His nuanced use of color subtly draws readers' attention to changes in the seasons that correspond to the changes in Anna's feelings. For example, when Anna finally resolves to plant the corn, Bloom shows her smiling in the field; light browns and grays (used for the soil, Anna's clothing, parts of the sky, etc.) dominate the illustration, while a patch of green in the distance reinforces the springtime setting, with its promise of renewal, as well as the rebirth of Anna's hopes. Not only useful for readers coping with bereavement, this work is resonant in its own right as a celebration of continuity, in nature and in the heart. Ages 6-up.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Grade 1-4-In the fall, Anna loves to walk through the drying cornfield with her grandfather. The raspy, crackling music of the stalks has the same quality as his aging voice. On one walk, he gives her a few kernels of corn to plant in the spring, and then he falls ill. After his death during the winter, Anna becomes reluctant to plant the seeds and lose them, too. With patient understanding and encouragement from her mother, the child grows to the realization that planting the seeds will renew her memories, and give her a chance to hear Grandpa's voice and the corn music again. The colored-pencil, graphite, and soft-pastel illustrations reinforce the hushed quality of the story. Following the same style that he used in Libba Moore Gray's When Uncle Took the Fiddle (Orchard, 1999), Bloom uses elongated figures that echo the corn plants swaying in the wind. The harmony of text and pictures is apparent in the muted colors and gentle figures. This quiet, reflective story can help children to accept the cycles of life and death, and the importance of memories in working through the grieving process. They can read this book on their own, but it will serve better if shared with an adult.-Carolyn Janssen, Children's Learning Center of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, OH
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.