The Word Collector

August 15, 1994
With her lyrical text and splendid oil paintings, Hamanaka ( The Journey ; Screen of Frogs ) offers a hymn to children everywhere, who are ``all the colors of the earth and sky and sea.'' Extraordinary, light-filled paintings accompany the single curving line of text on each page. A girl whose complexion is described as the ``crackling russets of fallen leaves'' turns a cartwheel in a sparkling autumnal scene. An Asian boy stares into the eyes of a lion, and both subjects are the color of the ``whispering golds of late summer grasses.'' Two bronze-haired boys play at the seashore, their skin the color of ``the tinkling pinks of tiny seashells by the rumbling sea.'' Hamanaka salutes the varieties of ``hair that flows like water'' and ``hair like bouncy baby lambs.'' She shows adults showering children with love that ``comes in cinnamon, walnut, and wheat,'' and ``amber and ivory and ginger and sweet.'' These joyful illustrations amply celebrate the richness and diversity of the world's ethnic heritages. All ages.

September 27, 1999
"Lyrical" text and "extraordinary, light-filled" paintings celebrate the earth, children and the diversity of the world's ethnic heritages, said PW. Ages 4-up.