Bound To Stay Bound

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School Library Journal - 10/01/2010 K-Gr 3—"In the country of Chad, it is the first day of school. The dry dirt road is filling up with children. Big brothers and sisters are leading the way." Thomas and the other younger children follow behind their older siblings, bombarding them with eager questions. "Will they give us a notebook? Will they give us a pencil? Will I learn to read like you?" When the children arrive at the schoolyard, they find only their teacher. Working under her direction, they build a school, using a wood frame, a few bricks, and a thatch roof and walls. With that completed, they have their classes. Nine months go by and rain clouds begin to gather. School is over until next year. Along with the rain comes the wind, and over time, the building disappears—washed away. Come September, the process will begin again. The final illustration features a smiling confident Thomas at the forefront, with eager, younger children following behind. The yellow, brown, and burnt orange shades dominate each of the spreads, both as background color and as part the dry, sandy, and hot landscape. The message of the story is clear—while the school structure may be temporary, education is permanent. This book also gives young children a glimpse into the school life of children in another part of the world.—Mary N. Oluonye, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH - Copyright 2010 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 09/01/2010 *Starred Review* Like Vanita Oelschlager’s Bonyo Bonyo (2010), this stirring picture book tells the story of a child in rural Africa who struggles to get to school. In a village in Chad, Thomas can’t wait to start school, and he is thrilled when he follows the older students down a dirt road on their first day of class. But when the children get to the schoolyard, there are no classrooms or desks, not even a roof. “We will build our school,” says their teacher, and with her instruction, Thomas’ first lessons are in making mud bricks and building walls, desks, and a thatched roof. At last, the class work begins, and Thomas learns something new and exciting every day of the school year’s nine months. Then the heavy rains come, and the storms gradually wash the school away. While serving as a Peace Corps volunteer, Rumford was a teacher in Chad, and the authentic details illuminate the spare text and beautiful artwork. On double-page spreads, the colored-pencil, ink, and pastel images echo the words’ elemental rhythms as they contrast golden-hued portraits of the children happily learning with dark, rain-drenched scenes of the school disappearing. The building eventually vanishes, but “it doesn’t matter. The letters have been learned and taken away by the children.” And come September, the students will build their school again. On the last page, Thomas points to his country on a map of the continent. Without a heavy message, this spare and moving offering will leave kids thinking about the daily lives of other young people around the world. - Copyright 2010 Booklist.

Bulletin for the Center... - 11/01/2010 It’s the first day of school for Thomas, who lives in the African country of Chad, and when he arrives at the schoolyard he finds that there is no school. “We will build our school,” says his teacher. “This is the first lesson.” After Thomas and his schoolmates build the school from mud and grass, they’re ready for their nine-month school year with their devoted and enthusiastic teacher; at the end of the school year, the rains come and wash the mud-based building away. Though the title is a little misleading, since it’s actually no-rain school, the writing is vigorous and evocative (“The dry dirt road is filling up with children. Big brothers and big sisters are leading the way”); Thomas’ neophyte role makes him a sympathetic entry point for young audiences who, like him, are relying on older kids to fill in the picture. The illustrations are dramatic and inviting, with the black linework strong yet casual and nimble in its delineation of the excited kids (sometimes looking out at the viewer as if they were being photographed) and their self-built surroundings; more immediately striking is the array of bright colors, in mottled, strongly resisting pigments that sometimes suggest fresco, sometimes crayon, against the richly textured sandy-gold walls of the mud school. The notion that school on the other side of the world is both different and similar will be interesting to schoolgoers and aspirants, and this could elicit discussion about other kinds of ways schools could and do work. There are no notes. DS - Copyright 2010 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

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