Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Meant to be read by a mother and daughter, Joyce Carol Thomas's A Mother's Heart, A Daughter's Love: Poems for Us to Share divides the 25 poems with the daughter's voice on the left and the mother's voice on the right. They capture moments such as a christening, a revolt against bathtime, the first day of kindergarten and a caution against growing up too fast ("Up All Night"). ( Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Children's Literature
National Book Award novelist Thomas shares a mother-daughter poetic dialogue in this slim volume. The conversation begins at birth, continues through childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood. Thomas uses a back and forth technique in which mother/child thoughts vary, blur, and finally merge into separate but equal insights. A mother and grandmother herself, Joyce Carol Thomas has an intuitive understanding of the female bond. Her perceptive poems are both humorous and moving. This would be a fine gift for any new mother of a girl-child. 2001, Joanna Cotler Books, $14.95 and $14.89. Ages 5 up. Reviewer: Kathleen Karr
School Library Journal
Gr 9 Up-A nostalgic collection of 25 poems written in the voices of a daughter and her mother, exposing the changing timbre of their relationship throughout the girl's life and the breadth of their feelings for and about one another. In the first verses, the newborn waits, blanket-swathed in the nursery, for the one who will claim her; in the final poems the grown daughter grieves for her deceased mother. Many of the selections in between highlight the feelings of the pair on the occasions of major events-christening, first day of kindergarten, basketball injury, first boyfriend, teenage angst, parental disapproval of a "wild and disrespectful" beau, college graduation, wedding, birth of a child. Thomas has separated the verses in each poem in order to indicate the different perspectives; the daughter's voice is on the left and the mother's is on the right. Occasionally, they speak at the same time. An author's note points out that each of the parts may be read independently or they can be read aloud by two people, "-so that the voices resonate separately, back and forth, in a call and response." Dad is mentioned in a couple of the poems, but the exclusiveness of the mother-daughter relationship is what the book is all about. Jane Yolen and Heidi E. Y. Stemple's Dear Mother, Dear Daughter (Boyds Mills, 2001) is a dialogue between mother and preteen daughter and will appeal to a younger audience.-Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
