cover image Ganzy Remembers

Ganzy Remembers

Mary Grace Ketner. Atheneum Books, $13.95 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-689-31610-4

Ganzy lives in a nursing home, where she is visited by her daughter and great-granddaughter, the narrator of this winning first book. She entertains her guests with stories of her girlhood, when ``everyone called her Daphne.'' Ganzy is a talented raconteuse, regaling her great-granddaughter with tales of her twin baby lambs, the horse she rode to school and the old mule that, having transported another child, would bray outside the classroom punctually at 10 a.m. Travelers would be invited to spend the night; a family of birds once made a nest in Daphne's father's overalls; Daphne took her bath in a washtub or the creek. Ketner's work is accomplished and well-wrought, evenly and rhythmically paced, with her narrator's appreciation of elderly Ganzy conveyed with both respect and humor. On the other hand, the illustrations are amateurish. Superficially pretty watercolors are splashed in a hodgepodge of styles, perspectives are skewed and proportions are poor. Ages 5-8. (Mar.)