JUN/JUL 08 - AudioFile
Listeners and their children will enjoy Patricia McKissack’s stories so much they might not even notice how this Caldecott winner has subtly woven in African-American history. Take “Aunt Gran,” for example, a former slave who allows her home to become a hideout for Jesse James, who is masquerading as a traveling businessman. In explaining this decision to her nephew, she says she will not abandon someone who has placed trust in her for any amount of reward money; her family once felt betrayed when a woman who had been hiding escaped slaves turned them in for reward money. The Ku Klux Klan also figures in the story. Perfect for listeners of all ages. E.D.R. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
As McKissack (The Dark-Thirty) opens this treasure chest of tales, she recalls spending summer evenings on her grandparents' front porch in Nashville, where her grandfather and visitors would share spellbinding "porch lies," comically exaggerated stories that often centered on rogues and rascals. The author then presents her own variations on such yarns, "expand[ing] the myths, legends, and historical figures who often appear in the African American oral tradition" to create a sparkling array of porch lies, brimming with beguiling tricksters. McKissack sets the domestic scene for each by describing the porch visitor who first related the tale. A standout features wise, sassy Aunt Gran, who outsmarts Frank and Jesse James, manipulating the bandits into running out of town the racist villain who salted her well in hopes of procuring her property. Other memorable characters include the conniving used-car salesman who is brought to judgment quite humorously on the eve of his wedding; the truth-twisting fellow who wins the liars' contest at the state fair with the line, "I aine never told a lie before"; and a famous blues harmonica player, who wreaks such havoc in the holding station en route to heaven-or the alternative-that he's sent back to earth. Aunt Gran, slyly telling the James brothers a tale that will convince them to help her, notes, "Some folk believe the story; some don't. You decide for yourself." Readers of these spry tall tales will have a grand time doing just that. Ages 8-12. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
School Library Journal
Gr 5 Up-These 10 literate stories make for great leisure listening and knowing chuckles. Pete Bruce flatters a baker out of a coconut cream pie and a quart of milk; Mingo may or may not have anything smaller than a 100-dollar bill to pay his bills; Frank and Jesse James, or "the Howard boys," help an old woman against the KKK-ish Knights of the White Gardenia; and Cake Norris wakes up dead one day-again. Carrilho's eerie black-and-white illustrations, dramatically off-balance, lit by moonlight, and elongated like nightmares, are well-matched with the stories. The tales are variously narrated by boys and girls, even though the author's preface seems to set readers up for a single, female narrator in the persona of McKissack herself. They contain the "essence of truth but are fiction from beginning to end," an amalgam of old stories, characters, jokes, setups, and motifs. As such, they have no provenance. Still, it would have helped readers unfamiliar with African-American history to have an author's note helping separate the "truth" of these lies that allude to Depression-era African-American and Southern traditions. That aside, they're great fun to read aloud and the tricksters, sharpies, slicksters, and outlaws wink knowingly at the child narrators, and at us foolish humans.-Susan Hepler, formerly at Burgundy Farm Country Day School, Alexandria, VA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
The author of The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural (1992), illustrated by Brian Pinkney, mines a lighter vein with nine original tales that hark back to yarns from her Tennessee childhood. Opening with reminiscent scene-setters, all feature human "slicksters and tricksters" able to get what they want with charm, like con man Pete Bruce-who scores a generous portion of coconut cream pie from an undeceived cook-or despite bad reputations end up performing some worthy deed, as does chauffeur Lincoln Murphy, who excavates a prematurely buried employer. Other tales feature appearances from Frank and Jesse James, helping to rid sharecroppers of a white predator; from Ralph, king of the ghosts; and from the Devil himself, who makes a young musician the same so-tempting offer once made to bluesman Robert Johnson at a certain crossroads. Capped by blues harmonica player Cake Norris's two-part odyssey up and down the ladder to Heaven, these tales all lend themselves to telling or reading aloud, and carry the common theme that even the worst rascals have saving graces. (author's introduction) (Short stories. 10-12)
JUN/ JUL 08 - AudioFile
Listeners and their children will enjoy Patricia McKissack’s stories so much they might not even notice how this Caldecott winner has subtly woven in African-American history. Take “Aunt Gran,” for example, a former slave who allows her home to become a hideout for Jesse James, who is masquerading as a traveling businessman. In explaining this decision to her nephew, she says she will not abandon someone who has placed trust in her for any amount of reward money; her family once felt betrayed when a woman who had been hiding escaped slaves turned them in for reward money. The Ku Klux Klan also figures in the story. Perfect for listeners of all ages. E.D.R. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
