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Summary
Summary
The day I was seven, my grandfather gave me and olive tree...At first, Sophia thinks the tree is an odd gift, but when Grandfather dies and her mother travel to Greece to see the tree, she discovers that what he discovers that what he has given her is far greater than she'd ever imagined.
A testimony to the wondrous ties of family and heritage, this glorious picture book brings together the beautiful writing of acclaimed author Eve Bunting and the exuberant paintings of artist Karen Barbour.
Author Notes
Eve Bunting was born in 1928 in Maghera, Ireland, as Anne Evelyn Bunting. She graduated from Northern Ireland's Methodist College in Belfast in 1945 and then studied at Belfast's Queen's College. She emigrated with her family in 1958 to California, and became a naturalized citizen in 1969.
That same year, she began her writing career, and in 1972, her first book, "The Two Giants" was published. In 1976, "One More Flight" won the Golden Kite Medal, and in 1978, "Ghost of Summer" won the Southern California's Council on Literature for Children and Young People's Award for fiction. "Smokey Night" won the American Library Association's Randolph Caldecott Medal in 1995 and "Winter's Coming" was voted one of the 10 Best Books of 1977 by the New York Times.
Bunting is involved in many writer's organizations such as P.E.N., The Authors Guild, the California Writer's Guild and the Society of Children's Book Writers. She has published stories in both Cricket, and Jack and Jill Magazines, and has written over 150 books in various genres such as children's books, contemporary, historic and realistic fiction, poetry, nonfiction and humor.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 3-For her seventh birthday, Sophia's grandfather gives her an unusual gift-an olive tree, a symbol of this Greek-American family's heritage and ancestral home. Although the girl would have preferred a skateboard at the time, the gift takes on more import when her grandfather dies a year later. Sophia and her mother then make a pilgrimage to Greece to hang her grandmother's beads on the family tree in accordance with her grandfather's last wishes. Placing the beads in the barren, aging olive tree behind the family's former home enables Sophia to feel connected to her roots and she vows to return someday. The folk-art illustrations' color, style, and choice of subjects lend flavor to a story that celebrates ethnicity. At times, though, the palette seems more vivid than the tale itself, which is a contemplative memory piece. Quiet and touching, it may encourage youngsters to explore their own family origins.-Rosalyn Pierini, San Luis Obispo City-County Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this visually arresting picture book, Sophia "receives" an olive tree from her grandfather on her seventh birthday, one that still grows on his native Greek isle. Months later, her dying grandfather requests that Sophia and her mother travel from California to Greece to the olive tree to hang the beads that had belonged to Sophia's grandmother, as a remembrance. During the course of the trip, Sophia learns a great deal about her family's homeland. Bunting (Smoky Night) spins a quietly nostalgic tale that transports readers to the exotic setting with images of whitewashed houses "sleeping in the sun" and a sponge seller's wares "stacked around him like great lumps of honeycomb." In a visual homage to Greek culture, Barbour (Street Music) deftly adapts her folk-art style to incorporate elements of local art and architecture in everything from the color schemeÄcobalt blue against white, lemon yellow and olive purpleÄto the characters' profiles, as stylized as those stamped on Greek coins. The townspeople wear traditional peasant dress; the legs of a table resemble Corinthian columns; and in a nod to Greek mythology, a sofa pillow is decorated with a winged horse. Barbour gives the tale a dramatic pause with a vertical spread showing the story's central image. The olive tree stands against a Van Gogh-esque landscape of flowing lines and swirling dabs of paintÄand takes on a life of its own. Ages 4-8. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Primary) The olive tree has special significance in Greek culture, although Sophia, who lives in California, is not aware of this when she is given one by her grandfather on her seventh birthday. ""Sophia really wanted a skateboard,"" her brother Georgios reminds Grandfather, not a tree growing on the island where their mother had lived when she was a little girl. But a year later, just before he dies, Grandfather asks Sophia to make a pilgrimage with her mother to place Grandmother's string of beads on the tree. Sophia initially thinks this is an odd request. As she and her mother travel from Athens by ferry to her family's ancestral home, Sophia takes in the unfamiliar sights and sounds, puzzled and a little frightened by her mother's emotional reactions. But when they finally reach the tree, depicted in the book in Van Gogh-like colors and brush strokes (and placed horizontally on the page so that the book needs to be turned sideways for viewing), Sophia understands the symbolism of the gift and of the moment. Both text and art are authentic portrayals of the culture. The illustrations have the flavor of Greek folk art in the multi-hued palette and curving lines and are also accurate in the minor details, such as the caged canary in Sophia's home, a popular pet in Greek households. And while the story deals with the icons of a specific culture, its theme-the ties between family and place-is universal. n.v. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Both language and image are gorgeous in this affecting story of generations from Bunting (Some Frog!, 1998, etc.) and Barbour. When Sophia is seven, her grandfather gives her the olive tree that lives on the land their family once owned on a tiny island in faraway Greece. The next year, just before he dies, he gives Sophia the honey-colored beads that were her grandmother's, and asks her to hang them in her olive tree. Sophia and her mother make the journey from California to Greece, and then to the island, and Sophia describes what she sees and hears, e.g., her mother, reading aloud the names of the Greek shops ``as if she liked the sound of them in her mouth''; sheep that bleat just like American sheep; the sound of the bouzouki playing. Bunting makes the strangeness of the journey and Sophia's growing understanding of her family history palpable, and Sophia's feelings when she places the beads in the ancient tree are complex but clear in a way that children will understand. The colors and shapes owe something to Chagall, and the sun-drenched blues and yellows, purples and violets recall Mediterranean folk pottery in the intensity of the color and the abstract, gestural line. The double-page opening of Sophia and her mother before the olive tree vibrates with emotion'a passionate marriage of word and text. (Picture book. 4-10)
Booklist Review
Ages 4^-8. These two cross-generational stories about family roots will touch many immigrant children and those whose relatives have traveled far from home. Sophia is a Greek American child in the U.S. who tells how Grandfather gives her a special birthday present before he dies: an olive tree on the small island where her mother grew up. It is all that is left of his home "in the Greek earth." He asks Sophia to go back with her mother and hang her grandmother's string of beads on that tree. Barbour's brightly colored double-page paintings with thick black lines combine folk art and magic realism to show the circles of connection that sweep across time and place as Sophia journeys with Mama to the island. They board the ferry boat while local people bustle around them, and Sophia watches Mama get quieter and quieter, intensely moved to be coming home. They see the family house, the field, and, finally--in a double-page vertical picture--the old olive tree rooted in the earth. The child's view of her mother's sorrow adds to the rich story of loss and renewal. In Naomi Shihab Nye's Sitti's Secrets (1994), an American child visits her Arab grandmother in Palestine. Here Geddoh (Grandfather) comes from the Middle East to the U.S. to visit Alex's family. The child's first-person narrative and the warm, full-page oil paintings focus on the loving bond between the boy and the older man, from the close embrace of their first exciting meeting at the airport to their sharing of gifts, food, games, and stories. The portraits are realistic and individualized. Geddoh wears Western clothes, and he talks proudly about the large city he lives in by the Mediterranean Sea; he also tells how the mosque calls him to prayers; and when he and Alex have a picnic by the ocean, Geddoh rolls out his prayer mat at sunset. Children will understand Alex's anger and sorrow at Geddoh's leaving. Many will also recognize the lasting family connections, the way letters can be "a thread of love across the ocean." --Hazel Rochman