Ages 4^-8. Work is seldom the focus in children's books, and the domestic worker is almost always a background figure, kindly, sometimes wise, but hardly a person with a home of her own. McKissack humanizes that role in a story based on the family life and work of her great-grandmother in rural Alabama in the early 1900s. Ma Dear is a single parent who makes a living doing housework for other people. The story is told from the viewpoint of her small child, David Earl, who can always tell what day of the week it is by which apron Ma Dear is wearing. Monday's apron is for washing, Tuesday's for ironing. On Friday Ma Dear wears a brown apron that won't show the dirt when she cleans house for a rich family, beating the rugs, shoveling ashes out of the fireplace, scrubbing floors. Saturday's apron is for baking pies to sell for David Earl's schooling. As with most loving memories, there is a softening of the harsh edges, but McKissack's words and Cooper's warm double-spread oil-wash paintings are true to the period. They show the exhausting work as well as the proud and loving bonds of family. Hazel Rochman
From Kirkus Reviews
McKissack's story looks at a week in the life of a turn-of- the-century African-American boy and his mother. David Earl identifies the days of the week by the color of Ma Dear's apron: Among them, Monday's is blue, with a long pocket harboring clothespins for her ironing work; a cheerful pink one for visiting the sick and shut-in on Thursday; Saturday's apron is flowered, signaling the day she sells pies at the railroad station. Sunday, blessedly, is apron-free, a ``no-work day,'' David Earl reminds her. With the aid of Cooper's paintings, McKissack gives real bite to the life of domestic workers 100 years back. This isn't a candy- coated mother-son relationship--Ma Dear is just as quick to tell David Earl ``no more buts, and stop whining,'' as she is to bestow a hug. But there's love here, cast over David Earl's life with the same uncompromising grace Ma Dear brings to all things in their lives. (Picture book. 3-9) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
Affectionate, appealing and full of information about the routines of domestic life. -- The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Patricia C. McKissack is the author of many highly acclaimed books for children, including Goin' Someplace Special, a Coretta Scott King Award winner; The Honest-to-Goodness Truth; Let My People Go, written with her husband, Fredrick, and recipient of the NAACP Image Award; The Dark-Thirty, a Newbery Honor Book and Coretta Scott King Award winner; and Mirandy and Brother Wind, recipient of the Caldecott Medal and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
Floyd Cooper received a Coretta Scott King Award for his illustrations in The Blacker the Berry and a Coretta Scott King Honor for his illustrations in Brown Honey in Broomwheat Tea, Meet Danitra Brown, and I Have Heard of a Land. Born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mr. Cooper received a degree in fine arts from the University of Oklahoma and, after graduating, worked as an artist for a major greeting card company. In 1984, he came to New York City to pursue a career as an illustrator of books and now lives in Easton, Pennsylvania, with his wife and children.
