The Horn Book Guide

PRESCHOOL

Zolotow, Charlotte

Hold My Hand: Five Stories of Love and Family

60 pp. | Hyperion | September, 2003 | Trade ISBN 0-7868-0518-8 $$19.99

(4) PS Illustrated by Carol Thompson. Four stories and one poem are collected in this omnibus edition. The stories include "But Not Billy," "Big Brother," and "Timothy Too!" and each focuses on an important family relationship: between a mother and child, a father and his daughter, and the sometimes rocky, sometimes loving relationship between siblings. Zolotow's soft, rhythmic prose is more successful than Thompson's less distinctive, somewhat bland watercolors.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth