When the Whippoorwill Calls

From School Library Journal Grade 2-5?Young Polly describes how her family is removed from their land in the Blue Ridge Mountains when the government buys it to create Shenandoah National Park. They are given a modern house and land in exchange, but they miss the hills they have called home. At the end of the story, romanticized by hindsight, Polly's father is reconciled to his loss when he and the girl return to the land and find Merkles, rare mushrooms that thrive in abandoned orchards. "Sometimes," he said, "change is good." Root's meticulously rendered pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations often frame the spare text and are set against textured earth-toned borders that echo and illuminate the colors in each painting. Details of mountain life in the '20s and '30s?work, recreation, houses, and scenery?are set out in both pictures and text, and give a clear picture of life in this time and place. For a picture book unit, this stunning effort might be paired with Alice and Martin Provensen's Shaker Lane (Viking, 1987) and Jane Yolen's Letting Swift River Go (Little, 1992), which also show people's reactions when government takes their property for other purposes.?Barbara Chatton, College of Education, University of Wyoming, LaramieCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. From