Reviews

DORA AND THE YELLOW STRAWSTACK -Kirkus Reviews

by Bob Bartel ; illustrated by Chad Thompson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 19, 2024

An exciting tale of misadventure and rescue. - Kirkus Reviews

Alittle girl and her brother get in a bit of trouble on a farm in Bartel’s illustrated children’s book.

In this tale, set roughly a century in the past, Dora is a little girl who does everything with her big brother, Henry. One day, she spots a harvest parade arriving to their farm and calls out to her sibling to watch the workers help their father: “Some men connected the tractor with a long heavy belt to the threshing machine. Some lined up the grain wagons. Others drove the hayracks into the field of stooks and gathered the yellow sheaves with pitchforks, tossing them onto the racks.” (Thankfully, a glossary at the beginning of the book explains the farming jargon for youngsters.) The next day, Dora and Henry can’t resist playing on the yellow pile of straw. Henry has an idea to climb the old, firm brown straw pile to jump across to the fresh yellow one and slide down its side. Henry goes first and makes it across, but when Dora follows, she falls into a hollow and disappears into the quicksand-like straw. Henry yells for help and their mother and Willie, a farmhand, come running to rescue Dora. Thompson’s full-color cartoon illustrations depict the landscape with simple backgrounds, drawing attention to the foreground action, which is particularly helpful when the prose describes details of the harvest process. The text can be challenging at times, as it’s littered with vocabulary that many children may find unfamiliar, but the eloquence and elegance of the storytelling (alongside the aforementioned glossary) make the book quite readable. Questions about the setting’s specific time and place go unanswered, but there are hints in the author’s family photographs, included at the book’s beginning and end. Ultimately, the sibling bond and the cooperative spirit of the farm effectively undergird the educational details about traditional farming practices. The main characters are depicted with pale skin; background characters have a range of skin tones.

An exciting tale of misadventure and rescue. - Kirkus Reviews