Awards
- Short-listed for Nevada Young Readers' Award (Young Readers) 2001
- Winner of Bookseller's Choice (Middle Readers) 1998
Overview
It has been 2 months since Spoon Gilmore''s g randmother died and he is worried that he will soon forget h er. He doesn''t have much time to look for the one perfect re membrance of Gram that he needs and ends up doing something that he soon regrets. '
Full Product Details
Author: Kevin Henkes
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Imprint: William Morrow
Dimensions:
Width: 13.50cm
, Height: 1.60cm
, Length: 20.00cm
Weight: 0.280kg
ISBN: 9780688152321
ISBN 10: 0688152325
Pages: 144
Publication Date: 16 September 1997
Recommended Age: 8+
Audience:
General/trade
,
Children/juvenile
,
General
,
Children's (6-12)
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Awaiting stock
The supplier is currently out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out for you.
Reviews
Once again Henkes captures young angst with respect and honesty. - School Library Journal (starred review) Sun and Spoon, so simply told, trust readers with truths that many children's authors avoid or treat mawkishly. Weighty though his subject is, Henkes's touch is light and deft. The book is fresh, delightful from start to end. - Five Owls
Wearing his novelist's hat, Henkes (Protecting Marie, 1995, etc.) offers another meticulously crafted, quietly engaging epiphany: A 10-year-old looking for just the right memento of his recently dead grandmother finds it literally in his hands. It's been two months since Gram's funeral, and Spoon, worried about his fading memories of her, surreptitiously searches his grandparents' house for something of hers with which to anchor them. He settles at last on the deck of cards she always used for solitaire, but his twinge of guilt becomes knife-edged when Pa, his grieving grandfather, allows that he'd been taking some comfort from using those cards, and can't sleep for wondering what happened to them. Spoon finds the courage to put them back and to confess; later he discovers something better - a tracing of Gram's hand, made when she was his age, with a big M on it and the legend, M is always for Martha, which was her name. Why better? Because he finds the same M in the creases in the lines of his own palm, as well as in his younger sister's and parents' palms. Henkes deftly delineates characters and relationships with brief conversations and small personal or family rituals, folds in motifs - hands, the sun - to give the plot a pleasing rhythm, and consistently finds the perfect words to evoke each moment's sometimes-complex feelings. Like Henkes's other novels, this is more restrained in tone than his picture books, but it is infused with the same good humor, wisdom, and respect for children's hearts and minds that characterize all his works. (Kirkus Reviews)
Author Information
Kevin Henkes has been praised both as a writer and as an illustrator and is the recipient of the Children's Literature Legacy Award for his lasting contribution to literature for children. He received the Caldecott Medal for Kitten's First Full Moon; Caldecott Honors for Waiting and Owen; two Newbery Honors, one for Olive's Ocean and one for The Year of Billy Miller; and Geisel Honors for Waiting and Penny and Her Marble. His other books include The World and Everything in It, A House, A Parade of Elephants, Chrysanthemum, and the beloved Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse. Kevin Henkes lives with his family in Madison, Wisconsin.
