Work and More Work

January 26, 2015
The icy silvers and grays of Pérez’s artwork give the pages of Little’s first picture book a chilly look, but readers—like Tom, the story’s hero—should forge ahead regardless. Tom’s family has nothing but discouraging words for him when he asks about life in town: “It’s the same everywhere,” his mother snaps. “Work and more work.” But he sets off anyway, and finds that strangers order him about (“You boy.... Help me stack these crates on my barge!”), he doesn’t mind obeying, and his willingness to work can take him anywhere he wants to go. He ventures to sea, reaching China, India, and Ceylon, where he discovers tea, indigo, and cinnamon, respectively. The tacked-on information about the products of these countries seems unnecessary—the heart of the story is Tom’s mastery of his own fate. Pérez’s three-masted ships and visions of far-off lands (the only place he uses flashes of saturated color) provide plenty of visual sustenance. Readers will be surprised to find that some 19th-century children (well, some boys, anyway) may have had more freedom than they do. Ages 6–9.

January 15, 2015
A young traveler discovers a world of wonders hidden in a seemingly ordinary word.Though assured by his industrious parents that there is nothing beyond their rural cottage but "work and more work," Tom sets out to see for himself. Odd jobs eventually lead him to sail off to encounter tea in China, indigo in a busy Indian marketplace and cinnamon in tropical Ceylon. Years later he returns to tell his parents that all over the world "people are busy making beautiful things." "I told you so," responds his mother. "Wherever you go-just work and more work." The narrative is a bare recitation of events, but in her afterword, Little explains that she visualizes Tom as starting out near Liverpool around 1840, then goes on to describe in some detail his parents' occupations and how tea, indigo and cinnamon were harvested and prepared for export at that time. Showing technical dazzle but a fussy sensibility, Perez renders foliage, architectural features and period dress in precise, superfine detail but gives human figures oversized heads, studied gestures, and tiny hands and feet. Moreover, though Tom is supposedly gone long enough to become "a young man and quite different from the boy who had left," in the illustrations he ages not at all, greeting his parents wearing the same clothes he set out in. Stylized and idealized but with some potential as a discussion starter. (Picture book. 7-9)

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