Betty Doll

Polacco, P. (2001). Betty doll. New York, NY: Puffin Books.

Before every reading any of Patricia Polacco's books I had heard that she liked to write stories that reflected on her own personal life; this story is an example of just that. Patricia put a letter that she found written by her mother into a book. The book was about Patricia's mother's doll that she made and named Betty Doll. The doll had seen many events that had happened through out her mother's life and the story reflected some of those events. As I was reading, I felt that for a children's literature book it was kind of emotional; all of the talk about the different occasions in the book and the deaths, yet it went into how Betty Doll helped her to move on from the sad things that happened to her.

I recently read Polacco's book The Keeping Quilt and mentioned that color was a big part in the book because on each page the only thing that was in color was the quilt. It was interesting to read this book and to see the same style used; the only thing ever in color was Betty Doll or anything that was being put on Betty Doll. Color continuously seems to be a big part portraying the message of the illustrations in Polacco's books.

My favorite part of the book, though it was a sad time, was on pages 13 and 14 when Mary Ellen and her brother are under the bridge during the snow storm. Mary Ellen had dropped Betty Doll and could not find her, and her and her brother were scared because of being stuck under the bridge until someone found them. The emotion from the illustration was just pouring off of the page! The expressionistic style allowed readers to look at the illustration and really understand just how cold and scared the characters really were. I found my self searching the page hoping to find a small spot of color where Betty Doll was buried in the snow, thinking this would bring a little bit of happiness, but there is not any color on the page.

Another thing that I found myself spending a lot of time looking at were the pictures towards the end of the book. Really, throughout the entire book Mary Ellen's face was always drawn with such detail that it almost looked as though it was a photograph, but then at the end of the book Patricia started adding photos to the illustrations. Beginning on page 26, you start to see photographs of Mary Ellen and her siblings which I though was a great eye catcher. I loved seeing the actual pictures, then I would go back and compare the portraits to the drawings of the characters and I could not believe how realistic the faces were of the main characters.

I think that this book would be great to use in my classroom when talking about the different book genres as well as in an art class when learning about sketches. It looks as though all of the illustrations (with the exception of Betty Doll) are done in pencil using shading.

Big Questions:

Have you ever lost something that you care about? How did it make you feel? Did you ever find that something?