The Long, Long Letter

Poor Aunt Hetta is waiting to hear from her sister, so Mother sits down to write her a long, long letter. How long? Well, the postman has to place a thousand stamps on the crates that carry it! But along the way, a wind whooshes the letter out of its boxes and into the sky. For any child who has ever lo nged for the mail to come, the arrival of this whimsical tale will deliver smiles and chuckles galore. Full color.

Kindergarten-Grade 3?Aunt Hetta lives a crooked mile from Neverbee and, with "...no kith nor kin to care for, she has too much time to fret." So her sister, the young narrator's mother, writes her a long, long letter. When it arrives through a slapstick turn of events, the letter not only satisfies Hetta's longing, but also cures her loneliness. Rhythmic and sometimes rhyming language catches a sense of whimsy extended by the busy, watercolor illustrations done in an emphatically folksy style. Set in rural middle America, perhaps in the 1940s judging by clothing and props, the final scene reveals an ethnically diverse population. It is notable, however, that young people are only peripheral to the action here. The book is nonetheless engaging because it is loaded with visual energy and humor. With its refreshingly original use of language and offbeat plot, the text is fun to read aloud and will be enjoyed by beginning readers as well.?Carolyn Noah, Central Mass. Regional Library System, Worcester, MA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Not for the timid, this tall tale teasingly tests its audience's tolerance for wordplay. Through rain and sleet and dark of night, lonely Aunt Hetta stands vigil by her mailbox, which holds nothing but cobwebs (one of Catrow's typically eccentric spreads portrays her as a watchful hawk perched on the empty canister). Fortunately, Hetta's sister is busy writing to Hetta, composing a dispatch that fills several crates ("It was a long, long letter"). A sudden whirlwind rips the tops of the crates and scatters the pages ("It was an all-gone letter"). Months go by: "It was a lone, lone Hetta." Finally, a passing storm delivers the pages via "air mail" to their destination, blanketing Hetta and her yard, and Hetta becomes "a ce-leb-ri-ty, instead of a non-entity." Spurr's (The Gumdrop Tree) narrative offers a playful but bumpy ride. Even linguistic veterans will need several read-throughs to acquaint themselves with the loop-de-looping rhythms, and some devices, like the unnecessary hyphens in "ce-leb-ri-ty," are used inconsistently, suggesting an experiment gone awry. Spurr's tongue-twisters, meanwhile, pose a formidable challenge ("Where was the missive from her sister? How could it have missed her?")-happily, it's a type of challenge young readers love. Catrow's illustrations bubble with detail yet are not as studied as those in She's Wearing a Dead Bird on Her Head! A horse pulls a mail cart and postal rates are just 20 cents a pound, yet bulldozers shovel Hetta's "blizzard" of pages and a boy's toy sportscar rests on a lawn-his is a world as topsy-turvy as the text. Ages 4-8.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Ages 5^-8. Aunt Hetta longs for a letter, but though she sits rocking by the mailbox, nothing ever comes. Finally, the young narrator's mother, Aunt Hetta's sister, takes pity, takes out her pen, and begins writing--but once she starts her letter, she can't stop. By the time she's done, months and months later, she needs 1,000 stamps to send her letter off to Hetta. Kids will chortle at both the story and the inventive visual images that illustrate it, including Hetta buried under an avalanche of paper and the bulldozers that come to dig her out. There's a happy ending, too, as the townsfolk who help Hetta stack the pages of the letter, stay to become her friends. A rollicking saga told in tall-tale tradition. Ilene Cooper

Aunt Hetta is lonely. She lives too far from town for friends, and her kith and kin haven't written. By her mailbox she pines, then fires off a postcard to her sister. ``Have you quite forgotten me?'' suggests Hetta, ladling on the guilt. So the sister spends a year penning a long letter that requires a thousand stamps to post: ``She wrote of cabbages and crocuses, sausages and shoes. The newly born, the price of corn, the cranking phone she'd never use.'' As the massive missive is being trundled to its destination, a fierce wind blows the pages skyward. Now airmail, the letter falls to earth like snow, burying Hetta. The whole town turns out to rescue her from the storm of words and Hetta gains a gaggle of new friends. Spurr (The Gumdrop Tree, 1994, etc.) lets the sister's son narrate this paean to the lost art of letter writing in a rollicking, tongue-in-cheek style. Catrow teases the story for all its humor, at one point turning Hetta into a raptor as she keeps ``a hawk's watch'' on her letterbox. A jolly tall tale. (Picture book. 4-8) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.