Madlenka

Starred review from October 2, 2000
Incorporating many of the visually astonishing methods of Tibet Through the Red Box, S!s chronicles the adventures of a New York City girl (based on S!s's own daughter) whose loose tooth occasions a one-of-a-kind round-the-world tour. S!s reels readers into Madlenka's neighborhood using meticulous cross-hatch drawings with a pale blue-gray wash: a distant view of the earth, then a continent, then an islandDall with tiny red dotsDlead up to the title page, which zeroes in on Madlenka's building on her block on Manhattan's Lower East Side. At last, the red dot becomes distinguishable as Madlenka's blouse as she stands in the window on the fourth floor. Discovering her tooth loose, the girl runs down the three flights of stairs to spread the news. The moment Madlenka makes her announcement, "Hey, everyone my tooth is loose!" her block breaks out of its box-like shape and transforms into a round carousel bursting with color. Here S!s sets the rhythm for the balance of the book. Madlenka's first stop is the French bakery. A silhouette image of the heroine appears at the left of the spread, as she calls out to the baker, "Hello, Mr. Gaston. My tooth is loose!" S!s frames her image with a scaled-down version of the city block and a border that highlights the bakery's yields. On the right-hand side of the spread, Mr. Gaston enters his p tisserie carrying baguettes ("Bonjour, Madeleine. Let's celebrate"); through a die-cut view of a tapestry in his shop window, readers see the Eiffel Tower flying the French flag. A turn of the page reveals a spread of the Eiffel Tower surrounded by not only Notre Dame and the Arc de Triomphe, but also Bemelmans's Madeline and Saint-Exup ry's Little Prince. Her visit to Mr. Singh's newsstand ("Sathsariakal, Madela") offers a glimpse of India; a stop at Mr. Ciao's ice cream truck ("Buon giorno, Maddalena"), a taste of Italy. Each of her visits sparks similar exchanges and other distant destinations, but thanks to S!s's careful buildup, the shops and their keepers retain a cozy proximity. As he did with Tibet Through the Red Box, S!s takes readers to exotic lands, yet continues to bring them back to the comfort of what they know. In Tibet, it was the father's study; here, it is Madlenka's block. When Madlenka returns home and tells her parents that she "went all around the world," readers will feel that they, too, have been armchair travelers, delivered safely home in S!s's capable hands. Ages 4-8.

October 1, 2000
PreS-Gr 4-A little girl joyfully skips around her New York City block to proclaim the news that her tooth is loose. In S's's hands, this is a journey filled with mystical creatures and magical symbols, as the child is greeted by an international panoply of merchants and neighbors. The tale unfolds as Madlenka first gives a realistic description of what she enjoys at each location, followed by a fanciful dreamscape of what she encounters in each world. She visits an Indian news vendor, an Italian ice-cream seller, a Latin greengrocer, among others, before returning home and explaining to her worried parents where's she's been. "Well-I went around the world. And I lost my tooth!" The opening pages depict increasingly focused aerial views, starting with a red dot on the globe on the endpapers and moving to a dizzying child's perspective of surrounding skyscrapers. Centered square or circular die-cuts frame the little blonde figure clad in pink on the left, offering glimpses into exotic lands on the right. The stark white background around the child contrasts effectively with the dark ink-and-watercolor scenes once the threshold has been crossed. Groups will be captivated by the concept and the drama provided by the die-cuts and the fantastic settings. Individuals will pore over the many details, delighting in the emergence of forms and meaning provided by close inspection. An odyssey made all the more wondrous by pairing a big moment in a small child's life with the happenings in the cosmos.-Wendy Lukehart, Dauphin County Library, Harrisburg, PA

Copyright 2000 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2000
Ages 4-8. "In the universe, on a planet, on a continent, in a country, in a city, on a block, in a house, in a window, in the rain, a little girl named Madlenka finds out her tooth wiggles. She has to tell everyone." So begins Sis' latest book, and on the following pages, Madlenka delivers her news "around the world" as she circles her block and celebrates with the international shopkeepers in visually stunning spreads rendered in Sis' signature drawings of detailed fantasy. A full-page image of each merchant and his storefront faces an aerial view of Madlenka, surrounded by the concentric borders. First are her block's stores (with each new shop colored in as it's introduced). Also present are small, culturally signifying cartoons that in some instances seem Eurocentric and stereotypical: the images for Mr. Ciao, from Italy, for example, are Pisa, pizza, and spaghetti; the drawings for Eduardo, seemingly representative of the entire continent of Latin America, show generalized categories--mountains, rivers, and people, including a figure in headdress and loincloth. The real magic comes in the cleverly cut-away windows in each storefront through which children glimpse complex, global dreamscapes. Madlenka journeys through these mystical places, too, and it is these surreal, wordless stories-within-the-story that will excite a wide range of children, launching them in their own imagined departures.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)