I Know Here

by Laurel Croza, Matt James (Illustrator)

Overview

Winner of the 2011 Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, the 2010 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the 2011 Ezra Jack Keats and New York Public Library New Writer Award, and a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Children's Illustration

The little girl in this story lives with her family in a trailer in northeastern Saskatchewan, where her father is building a dam. She knows everything about the place she lives -- her road, her school, the forest where she plays hide-and-seek and where the wolf howls at night, the hill where she goes tobogganing in winter . . .

But the dam is nearly finished and when summer comes the family is moving to Toronto -- a place marked by a big red star on the map at school. Have people in Toronto seen what I've seen? the little girl asks. And with her teacher's help she finds a way to keep everything she loves about home.

This simple, beautifully written story, complemented by Matt James's vibrant, imaginative illustrations, will resonate deeply with anyone who has had to leave their home for a new place.

Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.7
Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781554982301
Publisher:	Groundwood Books Ltd
Publication date:	10/01/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	40
Lexile:	AD570L (what's this?)
File size:	13 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	4 - 7 Years

About the Author

LAUREL CROZA is the author of the picture book I Know Here, illustrated by Matt James. It won the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award and the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, among many other accolades. She also wrote the sequel, From There to Here. The Whirlpool is Laurel’s first short-story collection. She lives with her husband in Toronto.

MATT JAMES is a painter, author/illustrator and musician whose many highly acclaimed children’s books include Yellow Moon, Apple Moon by Pamela Porter (New Mexico Book Award); I Know Here by Laurel Croza (Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award) and its companion volume, From There to Here; and The Stone Thrower by Jael Ealey Richardson. Matt’s illustrations for Northwest Passage, a stunning tribute to the iconic Stan Rogers song, won the Governor General’s Literary Award. He also wrote and illustrated the highly acclaimed book The Funeral. Matt lives in Toronto.

Editorial Reviews

…simple and profound…A story about a child leaving home could have been treated as a weepy leave-taking shaded with sepia sentiment. Heroically, Croza balances her story on something far more hopeful and true: a child realizing that the act of making art is a way to preserve memories of home. And to remember, you have to do something: pay attention, draw a picture, and take it with you.
—The New York Times

David Barringer

Gr 2–5—Moving from rural Saskatchewan to the city holds a lot of opportunity for a girl and her brother. The young protagonist experiences her share of apprehension as well, "This is where I live. I don't know Toronto. I know here." "Here" is first described as a single, trailer-lined road that runs from the dam that her father is working on to the school. Readers are then treated to the flora and fauna of the forest, hills, and creeks that the girl will miss. There's the man who delivers the groceries, her teacher, and her classmates, too. Miss Hendrickson suggests that she draw a picture encompassing all that she'd like to remember. She does and after sharing it with the class, she folds it away for safekeeping. "I will fold up the howl of the wolf and the smell of the fox in his cage...and the feel of my heart beating fast as I swooped over my road in a five-seater airplane. I will fold my drawing up small, put it safe in my pocket and I will take my road with me. To Toronto." The simple, straightforward text is spot-on in capturing the child's sensibilities and feelings. James's vibrant acrylic and India ink on panel artwork brings the girl's world to life, with its starkness, beauty, and haunting appeal. The stylized paintings at times have a surreal quality and are almost dreamlike in their composition. A regional look at a universal slice of childhood.—Luann Toth, School Library Journal

School Library Journal

Going walkabout down the small stretch of country road that she and her family are about to leave, a child offers a mildly comforting strategy to others who are about to pull up stakes. Her little brother is excited about moving to Toronto, but to the narrator, "This is where I live. I don't know Toronto. I know here." "Here" is rural Saskatchewan, where her family has been living while her father worked on a hydroelectric dam, now complete. Walking from home to school ("only me in grade three") and back, she counts her community's house trailers along the roadside, waves to a familiar passerby and recalls sighting a moose and hearing wolves in the surrounding woods. Her mood lightens at last when she realizes that she can capture and retain at least some of her small world by drawing pictures of it. James's vividly colored, naive-style scenes capture the bright intensity of the child's inner and outer landscapes and also the unaffected way in which she observes them. Good for sharing. (Picture book. 7-9)

Kirkus Reviews