Irene and the Big, Fine Nickel - Softcover

Irene Smalls grew up in Harlem in the 1950s and graduated from Cornell University. She also has an M.B.A. from New York University and held jobs as a model, an actress, a radio reporter, and a small business owner and is the author of many picture books.

Tyrone Geter received a masters of fine art from Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio with a major in painting. He now teaches painting and drawing in the Department of Art at Benedict College, and is also the director of the Henry Ponder Fine Arts Gallery, Benedict College, Columbia, South Carolina.

``Harlem [in the 50's] was a place where nobody locked the door, and you never questioned being black because there were a million people who looked just like you.'' Smalls-Hector's story, presumably based on reminiscence, follows Irene through one happy, event-filled Saturday: washing her face in the kitchen bathtub; going past the ``toilet room'' to a neighbor's apartment, where her twin best friends are among the 13 children and there's always delicious food to share; squabbling and then making up with another girl--''Charlene's people came from...down south, and they were church people''--(the traded insults are wonderfully mild); fearlessly playing in the park; finding a nickel and spending it on a bun big enough to share four ways. Like Howard's Chita's Christmas Tree (1989), this book lovingly recreates the secure childhood of an African-American child in the not-too-distant past. New illustrator Geter makes an outstanding debut, combining a warm palette, impressionistic use of light, a pleasing sense of design, and an affectionately realistic portrayal of the girls. The lengthy text is appropriate as a readaloud or for young readers. (Fiction/Picture book. 6-10) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.