Joan de Déu Prats, escriptor...
Sebastian
may have a couple of spills as he learns to roller skate, but this tale
from a Spanish team never takes a misstep. The young hero's shyness
stops him from saying all he wants to, and from approaching his
schoolmate Ester (she "had curly hair and eyes the color of honey"). A
pair of roller skates he finds in a park fascinates him, and as
Sebastian masters this new skill, he also finds the courage to say
more. Rovira's confident caricature-style human figures all share the
same wide-open eyes and stubby, squared-off noses; by contrast, he
distinguishes objects in minute details, with addresses lettered on
packing boxes and bulletin boards crowded with drawings and
announcements. The artist has great fun rendering the story of
Sebastian's interior life, gluing a dense trail of dreary
black-and-white newspaper scraps above Sebastian's head to signal his
trapped thoughts in the opening scenes, then scattering brilliantly
colored scraps and photographs as the boy brims with opinions he says
aloud: "And this time I don't want my head to look like a billiard
ball!" he tells the barber. He even invites Ester to go skating.
Sebastian's transformation emerges naturally, rather than from methods
or techniques. He discovers the skates, practices hard and
persistently, and his new abilities unfold on their own. Shy readers
may well emerge with the feeling that change is indeed possible. Ages
5-9. (Oct.)
Copyright © 1997-2005 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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