Daughter, have I told you?

From the Publisher

"In an ode to women and Mother Earth, a mother addresses her daughter in a poem filled with images of nature as feminine.... The poem is an awakening, whispered as a shared secret between mother and daughter.... Prismatic figures dance, bend, and radiate color, reflecting nature’s bounty." --Kirkus Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This lyrical, feminist work incorporates metaphors about the spirit and power of women shared from generation to generation, but it may be too abstract for the picture-book crowd. In full-bleed spreads, Halstead Ten-Second Rain Showers uses rich oils and pastels to depict burnished female figures flowing into the natural landscape: hair undulates into rivers, bodies stretch as tree trunks into the sky. However, presiding adults will be hard-pressed to explain to young listeners such enigmas as why the women have only four fingers and three toesand that's before they tackle the dense imagery of first-time author Coyne's poem. "Daughter, have I told you?" each sequence begins, heralding an unfurling of complex comparisons: "You are of women with tongues long like the river winding out tales as old as the Mississippi"; "You are of women with feet as heavy as the gray stones of the riverbed." Halstead's illustrations valiantly lend a universal quality to the womblike mother-daughter embraces, showing different shades of skin and types of hair as well as diverse terrain marsh, prairie, woodland. Although the art offers some startling moments for contemplationa coral-lipped face seen only in golden, horizontal profile gazes up at the luminescent moonthe narrative labors under the combined weight of its didacticism and poetic aspirations. All ages. Apr.

School Library Journal

K-Gr 3This narrative poem celebrates the bond between mothers and daughters that is passed on through the generations. The strengths and joys of being a woman are likened to enduring qualities of the earth and nature. A mother tells her child: "You are of women/whose words are wildflowers./Whose stomachs are soft hills/and whose shoulders are the river's marshy end." Sunny, dreamlike illustrations in pastels and oils of women interacting with and embracing the land enhance the lyrical tone of the text. Filled with adult sensibilities and imagery, this will go over the heads of most children.Sally R. Dow, Ossining Public Library, NY

Kirkus Reviews

In an ode to women and Mother Earth, a mother addresses her daughter in a poem filled with images of nature as feminine. Coyne's debut opens with a refrain of the title, answered with stanzas that begin, "You are of woman " and continue with sentient metaphors, "whose hands are the harvest./Whose hearts are/the deep, deep lake/and whose voices are/the silver birch of the woodland." The poem is an awakening, whispered as a shared secret between mother and daughter. While some of its lofty images and abstract sentiments of womanhood may be lost on the picture-book audience, it does celebrate every girl's inner strength through her connectedness to ancestral earth, an archetypal woman-mother. The physical and metaphysical are entangled here; words are wildflowers, hair is thick as the prairie, lives are the earth underfoot. Halstead represents woman's direct relationship to nature with encircling arms, swirling waters, curling hair, heads bent in embrace, and strong-faced trees turned skyward. Amphibious hands and feet transport readers past the human into a realm where forms of women are the landscapeþthe stomach is a soft hill (and part of a reclining nude), the profile of a face is a mountainous skyline. Prismatic figures dance, bend, and radiate color, reflecting nature's bounty. (Picture book. 5-9)