Synopsis
In this simple, evocative book a little girl stands at a frosty window waiting for her mother to come home. She draws in the condensation on the windowpane and wonders where her mother is and when she might return. This book, featuring wonderfully atmospheric images by Mandana Sadat, perfectly captures both the feeling of a foggy, gray winter afternoon and the kind of lonesome, hopeful, watchful waiting that is so familiar to any child who has waited for a parent.
Children's Literature
Just a few words per double page form a poem in both Spanish and English which takes us with our narrator to a winter afternoon. The frosted window offers a tempting canvas for a small finger. There a young girl draws a moon, with her mother inside. She pictures her walking down the street. As her mother comes closer, the girl makes her larger but still fitting inside her picture. Finally her mother is close enough to give a hug "that fits exactly," filling the frosty day with reassurance of the warmth of love. Sadat's simple vision deals in abstractions: rectangles and triangles become houses; a circle serves as a moon and a child's head. All is mystical rather than naturalistic. Mixed media, "scanned and composed on a computer," form the shapes which create unadorned scenes that are effective in relating the honest emotions of mother and child.