The Visit - Hardcover

Reeve Lindbergh has written of the wonderfully Awful Aardvarks.

K-Gr. 3. Two sisters' visit to their aunt and uncle's farm is re-created in Lindbergh and Halperin's charming collaboration. The individual events--playing in the barn, eating delicious home-cooked meals, experiencing a touch of homesickness----are less important than the heartfelt sentiment pervading the pages; the obvious affection the relatives feel for one another will warm the audience. The text, which uses four lines per spread with the last repeating the first, paints word pictures: "Windowpane, skylight, dormer and bay. / Light muslin curtains that rustle and sway. / Sisters asleep and dreaming till day. / Windowpane, skylight, dormer and bay." Halperin, whose pencil-and-watercolor artwork often seems like peering into a dollhouse window, uses the technique to best effect here. Arch-framed scenes take up most of the pages, but just below, strips of vignettes offer close-ups of the action. Ilene Cooper
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