Minho and his mother spend an afternoon doing errands around town. They go to the laundromat, shoe store, grocery store and other places before heading home.
There isn't much character development in this story. The story is more about how the afternoon is spent and the charactristics of the city. The illustrations do a good job of showing what life in the city is like. We see pictures of cars stuck in traffic and children playing stickball in the street.
The story doesn't have much of a plot either. A review from the School Library Journal calls the story "flat" and "bland." Despite this, very young readers will enjoy seeing where Minho and his mother go next and what happens when they're done with their errands. The ending is odd and doesn't fit with the pace of the rest of the story though.
The setting is outside on the streets and shops of a large city, such as New York. The illustrations
are extremely important to the setting. They help the reader visualize exactly what an afternoon in the city is like for Minho and his mother. The setting certainly affects the action because doing errands would be very different for Minho and his mother if they lived in a rural area or even in the suburbs.
The writing style is very simple and straightforward. There is no dialogue and very little text in
general. The text in the story itself doesn't use any figurative language, but some of the illustrations
have random sound words that fit the scene being depicted in the illustrations. This is very suitable to the story as the illustrations tell most of the story and the sounds help add to the busy atmosphere of the story.
The general mood of the story is one of being busy. Minho and his mother are busy doing their errands and the rest of the city is busy as well. It seemed as though this mood was going to change at the end of the story because Minho and his mother would get to relax once they got home. But just as Minho falls asleep, he's awoken by a leaky faucet dripping in the bathroom. This left me feeling unsatisfied, like the conflict had not been resolved, even though there wasn't really any conflict to be resolved in the first place.
The illustrations are definitely the best part of this story. The reader will feel like he or she is on
the street with Minho as the fire engine goes by. The illustrations look like paintings and some of the objects within the illustrations overlap almost like a collage.
This story has interesting illustrations that will appeal to young children, but older children looking for more of a story might not enjoy this book as much.
Amazon.com. 1994. School Library Journal. Available from
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/061399776X/qid=1094950154/sr=1-
1/ref=sr_1_1/102-0505924-0790555?v=glance&s=books. Accessed on 8 September 2004.
