The Blue and the Gray - Softcover

Grade 1-5-The families of two friends, one black and one white, are building new houses on a spot overlooking a field where a Civil War battle took place. The white boy's father describes the battle to the two children, and these imagined scenes are shown, juxtaposed with the everyday calm of the present. Surprised that there is no historical marker, the boys vow that they'll remember, and the father says: "We'll be a monument of sorts...a part of what they fought for long ago." Bunting uses a first-person narrative, writing in verse that is often evocative and lyrical. When the narrator finds an old bullet, he throws it "...high/across the field of bones./How silently it falls/into the tufts of grass/and flowers." The author does not always maintain an authentic child's voice, however. Bittinger's striking oil paintings are technically accomplished and suit the dramatic nature of the text. He's especially good with the contrast between the serene present, with its clear, transparent light, and the dark chaos of the fighting long ago. This well-intentioned story is not quite up to Bunting's best, but there is much potential for classroom use, and the book will make an interesting match with Patricia Polacco's Pink and Say (Philomel, 1994), right down to a painting of black hands and white hands reaching toward one another.
Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Bunting adds to her series of picture books with serious themes (Smoky Night, 1994, etc.) with this account of an unnamed Civil War battle framed within a present-day story of two young boys, one black, one white, whose new homes are being constructed within view of an unmarked battlefield. As the two boys, fast friends, explore their new homesites, they learn about the tragic loss of life that happened there in that war of ``us against us . . . the saddest kind of war there is.'' Bunting's text is mostly stated in the manner of a child's brief sentences, but sprinkled with rhyming words and typographically arranged like a poem in short lines that slow the reading to a somber pace. Bittinger's oils capture both the bucolic peace of the present-day countryside and the smoke and turmoil of battle, in one case as seen from exactly the same point of view in two consecutive spreads. Particularly effective is the ghostly presence of soldiers, cannon, horses, and wagons as faint silhouettes in some scenes of the two young friends. Offering only hints of the issues over which the war was fought, this is not a book to read without preparation, but it is a worthy complement to books such as Patricia Polacco's Pink and Say (1994) and Karen Ackerman's The Tin Heart (1990). (further reading) (Picture book. 7-10) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.