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| Waiting for Gregory | 
| Author: Kimberly Willis Holt
Creator: Gabi Swiatkowska
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $1.82
You Save: $15.13 (89%)
New (34) Collectible (4) from $1.82
Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 1014660
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Ages 4-8
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 32
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 11.3 x 8.9 x 0.4
ISBN: 0805073884
EAN: 9780805073881
ASIN: 0805073884
Publication Date: March 21, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 1-5 of 6 | | NEXT » |
 A Whimsical Story to Share with Older Children Awaiting the Birth of a Child May 8, 2007
Waiting for Gregory is a good story to share with children age 4-7 who are awaiting the arrival of a new baby. Told from a first person point of view, the narrator, Iris, askes various family members and friends how and when her new baby cousin is going to arrive. Answers range from a giant stork dropping baby Gregory over her aunt's house, to the baby growing under a cabbage. Iris does eventually get a straight answer from her mother who tells her that all of the answers are a little bit right (baby Gregory will come in nine months, when her aunt's belly is as big as a jack-o-lantern), but the exact day and time is something that nobody knows.
Waiting for Gregory also addresses the fact that although siblings and cousins may want to teach the baby a lot of things and play with him/her, it will take some time for the baby to grow. The story provides the assurance that eventually the child will grow up and be able to fish, build a snowman, and ride a pony.
The text is well written. It is a little long for children under the age of four, but I think it is well-suited for older children. The illustrations are very unusual and interesting to look at. They are a whimsical combination of oil paintings and sketches. I personally enjoyed looking at the sketches portraying the various myths.
I read the story to my two children, ages two and five. My five-year-old already knew that babies weren't delivered by storks. She thought it was silly to think such a thing. Nevertheless, she enjoyed the story, as did my two-year-old son, who enjoyed looking at the pictures.
Sherry Ellis
Author of That Baby Woke Me Up, AGAIN
 waiting is hard April 18, 2007
A young girl knows that a new cousin will join their family. She is having a hard time waiting for the baby's arrival. She asks all the people in her family how will she know when it's time for the baby to be born. They all have a different answer for her!
waiting for baby March 18, 2007
Waiting for baby might be a familiar theme in the world of picture books, but this one is unique. Kimberly Willis Holt mixes tenderness and humor. The illustrations by Gabi Swiatowska are stunning. This book was a finalist in the picture book category of the Cybil awards.
Worth "Waiting" May 22, 2006
Gabi Swiatkowska took a mildly amusing story of a girl awaiting her cousin's birth and the old wive's tales about where babies come from and turned it into something magical, surreal and both Old World and other-worldly.
Little Iris wants to know when cousin Gregory will arrive, but gets a different answer from every relative: when the stork brings him or when the cabbage grows big enough or when he's ready to descend a ladder to heaven. Holt's Iris reacts with just the right blend of wonder and skepticism, but it's the illustrations that let us peep into the dazzling workings of Iris' imagination.
On the title page, we're given a formal, 18th-century rendering -- in acrylic -- of Iris with be-ribboned hair and a rosebud-lipped pout. But on the very next page, the girl invites us into what looks to be a hastily penciled "Experimental engineering Theatre Company" with a shadowy interior.
From then on, we're Swiatkoska's captives in page after page of odd inventions and whirring gizmos that throw off the conventions of time. Some of the characters looks straight out of old Federalist portraits, others could be late 19th century or early 20th, judging by their costumes and hairstyles.
As Iris approaches one person after another, considering and then rejecting their explanations, wheels turn, minute-hands tick, a fat stork squeaks along on pulleys, time is measured by arcs of "not too long" and "not too soon", an angel peers ethereally from swirls of pale acrylic paint.
The publisher gave Swiatkowska room to roam, with full bleeds on every page, and she made the most of it, thickly layering paint and enamel, or inking in a tiny figure that might be an afterthought or may be the point of the whole page, tucked into a far corner instead of center stage.
The artist used acrylic, enamel, watercolor and gouache (a kind of opaque watercolor) in defying as many conventions as you possibly can without getting your own exhibit at the Met.
At last, the big moment arrives, announced by Iris' uncle via a machine that is part antique telephone, trumpet, printing press and, of course, clock.
I can only imagine what happens when an author picks up the galleys to her book and sees all this. Holt must've thought "Sheesh, did I win the illustrator jackpot, or what?"
Waiting, waiting, for this organized adult / Nothing's more exasperating or more difficult April 22, 2006
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I am relieved. Utterly, completely, fully, and wholly relieved. I am relieved because when it comes to illustrator Gabi Swiatkowska I never know what to expect. This is a mixed blessing. For example, when you pick up a book illustrated by Richard Scarry or Steven Kellogg you know what you expect. Their art always stays the same and their style never wavers one way or another. But pick up a book that carries the words, "paintings by Gabi Swiatkowska" on its cover and you might as well be picking up a beautifully wrapped present. Inside you may find everything you ever hoped or dreamed of, or you might be woefully disappointed in some way. Now I adored Swiatkowska's remarkable work on, "My Name Is Yoon" and cooed over its incredibly inventive pictures. Then came "Summertime Waltz" and while I essentially liked the book, I wasn't carried away by what Swiatkowska had chosen to do with it. So you can understand that when I saw "Waiting For Gregory" for the first time, I was wary. For all the book's charms, the cover illustration is not going to immediately draw you in. Open the book up though and you'll find yourself simultaneously entranced by both author Kimberly Willis Holt's touching story and Gabi Swiatkowska's wonderful interpretation of the author's events. This is not a book for everyone, but for those who like a little dreamy zaniness with their children's literature, it's going to fill a definite need.
Iris has just learned that her Aunt Athena is expecting a baby boy and she simply cannot wait. His name will be Gregory and Iris is impatient to meet and play with her little cousin immediately. Unfortunately, no one is being completely forthright with Iris about this arrival. When she asks when he'll come her father says "Soon, Iris, but not too soon". Her grandfather spins her some story about a stork flying in, while her grandmother goes for the old baby-growing-underneath-a-cabbage tale. In fact, every person Iris talks to gives her an entirely different view of when Gregory will come (and in what form) until she finally asks her mom. Mom lays it on the line. Babies take nine months but no one knows what the exact day and time will be when Gregory arrives. This is an answer that Iris can handle, so she waits and waits and waits for Gregory. Finally, in the fall, her uncle calls with the good news that Gregory's here. The family rushes over and Iris realizes pretty quickly that it'll be some time before her cousin is old enough to play. "And soon, but not too soon, though not too long at all, Gregory will be waiting for me". The last page shows a little boy standing there, ready to play.
Now when I wrote this summary of "Waiting For Gregory" you probably had a certain view of how the book might look. Perhaps you saw the family as living on a rural farm or in a suburban home of some sort. I'm sure author Kimberly Willis Holt had her own mental picture of the events she penned. Which makes me wonder what Holt thought when she saw Swiatkowska's elaborate, amazing illustrations. She probably didn't think of setting the whole thing in a kind of 1700s/white-powdered wig/circus performer/who knows what-all era. What Swiatkowska has done here is create a setting that may never have existed but that you wish desperately could have. It's a beautiful, stunning, overwhelming series of images. For example, when Iris asks her father when Gregory is coming and he gives that soon but not too soon but not too long answer, an elaborate graph appears over Iris's head calculating the radius of where "not too long" intersects with "soon", which in turn leads from "not too soon". The entire book, actually, is doing several things simultaneously. You have the characters acting out their parts as per Holt's words. Then you have visual diagrams and graphs that play out some of the crazy things they say. So when grandpa feeds Iris the unlikely stork tale, she in turn imagines a convoluted overweight stork brought in on an elaborate pulley system. When Iris in turn thinks of how she'd love to teach Gregory how to swim, we see the outlines of a small boy swimming with a well-detailed diving helmet of sorts underneath a buoyant weather balloon. And I don't want to forget to mention how Swiatkowska uses the book's gutters time and time again. Sometimes her pictures will span two pages, but often there will be two entirely separate pictures on two separate pages. When that happens, images fall into the gutters on purpose and never surface again on the facing page. It's a unique take on the picture book format and one that works especially well with this book.
I don't want to spend all my time talking about Swiatkowska's art when a great deal of credit should be given to author Kimberly Willis Holt as well. You may be familiar with some of Holt's work for older children and teens. After all, she won the National Book Award for, "When Zachary Beaver Came To Town", and is also responsible for the well-received, "My Louisiana Sky". It's obvious that Holt carries with her a deft hand at capturing the voices of children of every age. In this book, Iris's anticipation is keenly felt. You even come to believe that she would actually have grown and changed enough by the end to await Gregory's further growth with a kind of child-like acceptance. No small feat in a book of only twenty-nine pages.
Actually, the book this reminded me of the most in some ways was the delightful, "Learning to Fly" by Sebastian Meschenmoser. Both books illustrate seemingly simple stories with beautifully penciled details, graphs, and oddities. They would not be poor companions together for one-on-one readalouds. Meschenmoser hails from Germany while Swiatowkska is one of the very few Polish illustrators to gain recognition in American publishing. And once again I'd like to reiterate how relieved I was with, "Waiting For Gregory". Kids reading the book will enjoy Holt's story and Iris's anticipation. They will also love the beautiful entrancing paintings Swiatkowska has painted for the story. After all, who wouldn't want to live in a world where rocking horses are the sizes of real horses and people get to wear pointy shoes? Countless picture books come out every year pertaining to new babies and their siblings. This one definitely separates itself from the pack.
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