A hot, arduous and typical day in the life of a family of migrant cotton pickers is the subject of Williams's striking first picture book. Shelan describes how her parents, brothers and sisters arrive at the cottonfields before dawn and toil till night to fill sacks with the fluffy white harvest. At times both gritty and poetic, Williams's text is written completely in Shelan's dialect. Though the phrasing may require careful reading, it adds a necessary authenticity to the story while presenting a difficult way of life. However, the author does not pass a negative judgment here: her characters play, sing and admire nature--when they have the chance. Bayard's intense acrylic paintings capture the beauty of the California landscape as well as the intensity of human struggle--thoughtfully reflected in her cast's sweaty faces. Vast fields of white cotton tufts against an endless blue sky create an appropriate sense of isolation. Though some may object to the portrayal of African Americans picking cotton, Shelan's family is to be respected for embracing life and doing whatever it takes to make their way in the world. An auspicious debut. Ages 4-8. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

The story of Shelan's day working in the cotton fields with the rest of her family becomes a powerful, poetic tribute to migrant farm workers. Byard's mural-like illustrations contribute weight and emotion to Williams's spare, lyrical text. From HORN BOOK 1992, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Ages 4 and up. "The rows of cotton stretch as far as I can see." The voice is that of Shelan, a migrant child laborer in the cotton fields of central California, and the words hold both physical reality and bitter metaphor. She tells of a long day of work with her family--from the cold smoky dawn to night. Byard's double-page acrylic paintings set the soft whiteness of the cotton crop against landscapes and portraits of glowing color, and the sense of beauty and space underlines the child's confinement. The text, based on Williams' Peacock Poems (a National Book Award nominee), is spare, colloquial, and immediate, a way of life concentrated in a single day. The family is warm, but friendship is fleeting when "you hardly ever see the same kids twice, 'specially after we moves to a new field.'" There's no self-pity or squalor, and no false nobility either, but rather a sense of bone-weariness and lost potential and no end in sight: "It's a long time to night." Williams says in a note that she drew on her childhood experience in the cotton fields of Fresno: her book speaks for children everywhere at work far from home. With its restrained, poetic text and impressionist paintings, this is a picture book for older readers, too. ~--Hazel Rochman

``We gets to the fields early, before it's even light. Sometimes I still be asleep.'' In grave cadences, young Shelan describes a day of picking with her migrant family. In one of Byard's powerful, impressionistic acrylics (repeated on the jacket), Shelan stares penetratingly at readers as she slumps wearily amid piles of cotton; otherwise, the figures here are stooped, shadowy, tragically impersonal images with lowered eyes. The artist and poet (the text is reworked from two of Williams's Peacock Poems, 1975) effectively capture a strong sense of family, of exhaustion at day's end, and, most poignantly, Shelan's isolation--children she meets in one field are generally gone by the next, and there seems to be no life for her or her family beyond their work. A brief, deeply felt portrait. (Picture book. 6-8)