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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... Silver Falls Library | JP PELLETIER | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | PELLETIER | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
In the attic, Jed finds an old toy tractor with a miniature farmer in the driver's seat. It seems just like any other toy but then amazing things happen. First, Jed's bedroom carpet begins to sprout tiny green shoots. Then a pumpkin appears on a vine. It grows and GROWS, until it is big enough to win first prize at the county fair. When Jed returns home with his ribbon, the mysterious farmer is a toy once again... or is it?
Scott Nash's inventive art, complete with vintage toys, adds a nostalgic feel to the magic.
Author Notes
Authors Bio, not available
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Nash's (Flat Stanley) irresistible retro-inspired illustrations light up this fantasy about a toy that magically comes to life. When Jed finds his father's toy farmer in the attic, his father says, "Craziest toy I ever had!" Then his dad puts on "a secret little smile and winked at Jed as if he knew something that he wasn't telling." When Jed awakens in the morning, his green bedroom rug has become a brown dirt field, which the farmer is plowing in his red tractor. Crops spring up; instead of fairytale, Jack-in-the-Beanstalk vines, this farmer's sprouts are like mechanized sculptures, looking as if they were formed of pipes decorated with scrolling vines. A pumpkin sports an old-fashioned skate key instead of a stem, and when it grows to gargantuan proportions, wheeled ladybug toys crawl over it. Keeping the story within Jed's fantasy world, Nash depicts the "people" the boy interacts with as toys also-a robot, a stuffed dog, wooden dolls-and eventually they convince Jed to enter the pumpkin in the county fair, where he wins a grand champion blue ribbon. When the toy farmer and all his transformations disappear, Jed's father consoles him by showing Jed his own grand champion ribbon, and says, "That Toy Farmer will show up again. He always does!" While Pelletier (The Amazing Adventures of Bathman!) describes Jed's imaginative adventure competently, the overused ending undercuts the book's effectiveness. Ages 4-up. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
When Jed discovers an old toy of his father's in the attic, it catapults him into a fabulous agrarian fantasy. "Let's just say that was some farmer," says his father with a wink, and so he is. Corn cob pipe clenched cheerfully in his teeth, the farmer sits in his tractor, seeming at first like any old tin toy. But when Jed wakes up the next morning, he finds that his green rug has been tilled into an orderly field, out of which, days later, sprouts a remarkable pumpkin. Pelletier gives readers a beguiling concept, allowing the lines between reality and fantasy to blur pleasingly. It's but a simple step from Jed's singing "Blue Moon of Kentucky" along with his toy to entering his humongous pumpkin in a fantastic toy county fair. Nash's illustrations beautifully facilitate the reader's acceptance of the premise, rendering Jed's "reality" in soft pastels and the toy farmer and his world in sharp-edged cartoons. It's a gentle homage to the power of a child's imagination, where the fantasy world created in play always seems more solid than plain old reality. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Prowling through the attic, Jed discovers an old toy that had belonged to his father a red tractor driven by a little farmer. Magically, the rug by his bed turns into a dirt field and day after day, the farmer converses with Jed while tending his solitary crop an amazing, mechanical-looking vine that eventually yields an enormous pumpkin. They haul it to the toys' county fair, where the judges award Jed a Grand Champion ribbon identical to the one his father had received as a boy. Nash creates interesting effects digitally in the artwork by drawing Jed and his world in strokes of softly shaded colors and creating the fantasy elements, such as the farmer and the many toys-come-to-life, by using sharply defined edges and flatter colors. Fine for reading aloud, this well-imagined story features distinctive illustrations and, for once, a farm-inspired theme that isn't centered on barnyard animals.--Phelan, Carolyn Copyright 2007 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
"THE ALL-I'LL-EVER-WANT CHRISTMAS DOLL" is a rich portrait of a poor black family in the midst of the Depression. Written by Patricia C. McKissack, the winner of numerous awards, and illustrated by the equally renowned Jerry Pinkney, it has the look, sound and feel of a classic. McKissack's direct and unfettered language partners beautifully with the vivid tones of Pinkney's pencil-and-watercolor illustrations. Inspired by a true story, "The All-I'll-Ever-Want Christmas Doll" is an evocative book with a universal message. Nell, the middle daughter of three, tells the story of the Christmas she set her heart on a doll glimpsed in The Pittsburgh Courier, with which her family is repapering their walls in preparation for the oncoming winter. "Baby Betty is all I want ... ever," she announces to her sisters, who make fun of her for her unattainable desire. Nell has an authentic, blunt narrative voice of a girl we'd like to know. "I flat-out refused to give up my dream," she says, and without telling anyone writes her letter to "Santy Claus." She has already spent many nights imagining herself and Baby Betty playing together, and we think of her as basically good-hearted, so her selfishness on Christmas morning, when Baby Betty is miraculously presented to the girls, takes us by surprise, but makes her all the more convincing as a little girl. Nell refuses to share the doll with her sisters, who did not believe in her dream. They reluctantly agree that the doll is rightfully hers and go off to jump rope. But when Nell attempts to engage Baby Betty in the same games she's accustomed to playing with her lively sisters, she grows frustrated relying on her imagination to sustain them. Not until she invites her sisters to join in does she truly come to enjoy the new doll. No matter how much you love it, McKissack's story reminds us, an inanimate toy is no substitute for playmates. Play with me: Clockwise from top, illustrations from "The Curious Adventures of the Abandoned Toys," "The Toy Farmer" and "The All-I'll-Ever-Want Christmas Doll." BUT don't tell that to Jed, in Andrew T. Pelletier's "Toy Farmer." When Jed discovers a toy farmer astride a bright red tractor "in the darkest back corner of the attic," his father reveals, with a wink and a "secret little smile," that it was his childhood plaything: "Craziest toy I ever had!" The first day Jed plays happily alone with his toy, suffering none of the frustration that beset Nell during her solitary play. When he wakes up the next morning, the toy has taken on a life of its own: the bedroom rug is now a field, and the farmer is busy tilling and weeding. Day by day the fantasy takes on new dimension and detail, with Jed looking on in awe. Eventually he is invited to participate by entering the farmer's enormous pumpkin in a contest - but when he rushes home to share his special award with the toy farmer, the wonderland has disappeared and his bedroom is simply his bedroom once again. The zany premise of "The Toy Farmer," with its energetic execution by the illustrator Scott Nash, requires that we, like Jed, fall under its spell. Most of us will be happy to go along. Jed, his father and all the "real" settings are rendered in soft-colored pencil and watercolor, while the fantastic elements that take over the bedroom are bold and bright, with the sharp edges of mechanical playthings of an earlier era. Aided by digital artwork, Nash renders the vines and vegetation as animated pipelike constructions and the people and animals, as well as the giant pumpkin, as vintage metal windup toys. Does Jed have a better imagination than McKissack's Nell? Why is he capable of finding pleasure in his solitary game? The appeal of this book is that it doesn't trouble to answer such literal-minded questions. When the fantasy ends, there is no reassuring hint that it was all just a dream. It was pure, if not simple, make-believe. "The Curious Adventures of the Abandoned Toys," by the English screenwriter, director and actor Julian Fellowes, asks for an even bigger stretch of the imagination, but one that feels more familiar. Like Margery Williams's "Velveteen Rabbit" or Kate DiCamillo's "Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane," Fellowes's book is told from a toy's point of view. Children who figure in such stories are merely part of the shadowy backdrop against which the toys' own tales evolve. Doc, a teddy bear who has lived in a children's hospital for most of his long life, undergoes a series of alarming adventures and then finds himself in a dump, home to a community of abandoned toys with its own rules of etiquette. When Doc inquires of a blue bear, "Where are you from?" he is politely admonished by another bear that "one isn't supposed to ask that question around here. If a toy wants to tell you how he or she wound up in a dustbin, all well and good, but you can't ask. Do you see?" Fellowes's formal style is delightfully complemented by S. D. Schindler's precise artwork; both the full-page color illustrations and the small line drawings are splendidly realistic. Schindler's stuffed animals are wonderfully tactile, with different textures and visible seams - making a sole porcelain doll look all the more peculiar in contrast. She is an odd mix of elements, with a thin fashion-doll frame but no visible joints, that nevertheless takes on fluid human poses. She is meant to be a diva, a toy of higher quality, but her oddly unconvincing appearance is distracting. "The Curious Adventures of the Abandoned Toys" exudes a classic English ambience; it might easily be found in the Banks's nursery in "Mary Poppins" (or the current Broadway version, at any rate, since Fellowes wrote its book). Also the writer of the Oscar-winning script for the film "Gosford Park," here Fellowes offers a story into which young readers can settle comfortably, filled with sympathetic characters and adventures. Both Fellowes's book, with its soothing illustrations, and Andrew T. Pelletier's wilder vision of make-believe are firmly rooted in the tradition of magical toy stories, where things have a life of their own. Patricia C. McKissak's affecting tale, on the other hand, reminds us of the overpowering joy a toy can bring to a child, and the greater pleasure of sharing it with beloved playmates. Krystyna Poray Goddu's most recent book is "Dollmakers and Their Stories: Women Who Changed the World of Play."