Elizabeti's Doll

Books, particularly children's books, often transport readers to lands unknown or not yet explored. Books can be Aladdin's magic carpet or Emily Dickinson's frigate that takes us lands away. Picture books, with their evocative illustrations, amplify the adventures; better still, the picture book experience enhanced by audio interpretation. With ELIZABETI'S DOLL, listeners will join Elizabeti in Tanzania, where her mother is busy with a new baby, causing Elizabeti to long for a doll she can nurture. Lovely music will transport them to the plains of East Africa, enhancing the spirit of the story, which is imbued with the small details of daily life and child rearing. Children will be enchanted with this universal story set in a land of open cooking fires, water carried in jugs, and little girls who make do with rocks for dolls but love them nonetheless. T.B. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine

Starred review from August 31, 1998
In an impressive debut, Stuve-Bodeen warms the heart and hearth with this sweetly evoked tale inspired by her experiences in the Peace Corps. Set in a Tanzanian village, the story tells of Elizabeti, who watches her mother care for her new baby brother and longs for a little one of her own to cuddle. She has no doll, so instead she looks around for a suitable "baby" and soon finds a rock that's shaped just right. Carefully mimicking her mother, she bathes, feeds (her doll is "too polite to burp") and changes "Eva," and when doing chores ties Eva to her back "with a bright cloth called a kanga," just as her mother does. Downcast when Eva is misplaced (her sister accidentally uses the rock for the cooking fire), Elizabeti finds her special doll in time to sing her to sleep. Stuve-Bodeen's well-balanced prose strikes just the right tranquil, gently humorous tone. She lovingly delineates the mother-daughter relationship, and offers a rare, intimate view of another culture while sounding a universal chord. Hale (Juan Bobo and the Pig), meanwhile, deftly captures the story's mood in softly shaded mixed-media illustrations, juxtaposing brightly printed motifs in African fabrics against an earthy, sundrenched palette. The artist is equally adept at conveying close-up portraits with a full emotional range as she is a village scene of Elizabeti carrying a water jug atop her head. A little slice of perfection. Ages 4-up.