by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 11, 2010

"Mama and Me and the Model T" is exactly the story you'd expect. There's a family in a folksy town, and they're dazzled by the arrival of a funny new-fangled motorcar. "It lurched into the yard, burping and hissing, and came to a stop with a honk on the horn.  Urrrh-ru-gah!" And there's bright, colorful illustrations that give the story a sense of fun.

But the book gets a special boost from both its author and its illustrator. Author Faye Gibbons "knows firsthand about the people who populate her books," the book's jacket explains, since she was born into a large mountain-farm family, and grew up in Georgia's mill towns and mountain areas. She fills her story with an equally large family - five children from one marriage living with seven children from another. So this makes it even more special when the stepfather singles out one daughter for a promise that he'll come home with a surprise.

"Sure enough, down the road came a Model T, chugging along the pasture fence, scaring the mules and the cows..."

But Gibbons' vivid text finds a perfect match in the watercolors of artist Ted Rand. When the text states that it was fall in the Georgia mountains with leaves turning gold, Rand brings the scene to life. (There's a wooden fence around a field filled with bony stalks of cotton, with an enormous tree in the foreground flashing brilliant yellow leaves.) And when the text first describes the twelve children in the family, Rand uses two full pages to show the smiling faces of every one of them. He keeps yellow leaves in the background of his paintings, creating a sense of place and a continuity to the story.

Each child reacts to the exciting new vehicle. There's a whoop, a rush out side, cheering and laughing, and some barking dogs. "Who wants a ride in the Model T?" asks the smiling stepfather. Both the text and the picture show the magic of the moment. And soon all 12 kids have packed into the tiny vehicle - two perched on the running boards -
for the family's first ride around the farm.

"Any man can do it," insists the stepfather - which sets up the story's real point. "Then so can any woman," replies his wife - and all his daughters shout in agreement. The stepfather shouts, "Wait!" But the wife ignores him, and hops in the car.

And soon she and her daughter are stealing a joyride of their own.

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