Reviews
Every year about this time, as the weather
becomes less hospitable to the outdoor life,
one of the coziest alternate choices for
enjoying some leisure is to yield to the urge to pick
up a good book and get lost in the written word.
Books, aside from being the perfect companions
for a quiet evening at home, also make excellent
gifts, and we are just about into the time when
gift suggestions are particularly welcome.
I first dipped into a review copy of "The Grapes Grow Sweet." The children's book tells
a story of fascinating enough to hold the interest
of the parents even after they have yielded to the
requests from the small fry to "read it one more
time, then I'l go to sleep." The tale chronicles
the first harvest in which four-year-old Julian is
old enough and big enough to participate. The
words come to life in the dozens of illustrations
that follow the progress of the vines in the family's
vineyard, from dormancy through the harvest.
Julian is, according to the author's notes, a real
boy who is a member of the fourth generation of
his family to respond to the sights and scents of
the vineyard, and it's easy to share his enthusiasm
as you read along. Except that it would destroy the
book, physically, the artwork is so tempting that the
idea of framing some of the pages is hard to resist.
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