Maria Rowe's Reviews > Working Cotton

• 1993 Caldecott Honor Book •

This book was ok. I wasn't fond of the text. And I was sort of confused about the message... The author's note at the beginning says, "Our shame as a nation is not that so many children work the fields but that so few of them have other options [...]" But when I read this story, it really seemed like the little girl, Shelan, enjoyed picking cotton. She was jealous she wasn't old enough to get her own bag, she and her family were smiling while having a picnic in the middle of the work day, she got to meet friends while picking, she said "cotton smell like morning"... So I didn't really understand the message of the book. It felt really depressing - Shelan was a cotton picker, she enjoyed it and didn't have any hopes or dreams beyond that. Ugh. The only thing I liked was the family working together, and the illustrations were great.

Materials used: acrylic paints on Stonehenge white paper
Typeface used: text: Berkeley Old Style Medium • display: Caruso Scratch Dot