No Telecommuting in 1940

Coming On Home Soon

Written by Jacqueline Woodson

Illustrated by E. B. Lewis

G.P Putnam’s Sons, 2004

29 pages

Historical Fiction

            The librarian at the Jacksonville Public Library recommended this book and said I would love it.  So I checked it out, came home and read it. She was right.  The story is set in the 1940s during WWII.  A young African-American mother leaves her daughter with her mother and goes north to Chicago to work.  While she is gone, the little girl tells the story of how she misses her mother and talks of the simple life she and her grandmother have.  During the story a surprise shows up and helps the young girl with missing her mother.  

            The illustrations are done in water color on Arches paper.  The illustrations look like art work to me with calm browns, white and gray used throughout the book.  The text is in a formal format with text on one page and illustrations on the other with the exceptions of a few pages that have a vignette and one that is a full two page illustration with two words typed on it.  In this illustration one can see how small the little girl feels in the world without her mother.

            This book would be good for kindergarten through sixth grade.  A social studies lesson would work well with this book to talk about the culture during the WWII and how it was hard on everyone not just the soldiers.  A history lesson would work well to teach about WWII and why and who we were at war with during the 1940s.  A character education lesson would work well, to talk about when parents go off to work or war and how that affects children and adults.  At this time this book as won no awards.