Wee Gillis

Title: Wee Gillis                                                 

Genre:  Picture book                                        

Author: Munro Leaf                                         

Illustrator: Robert Lawson                           

Publisher: New York Review Children's Collection

Publication Date: May 30, 2006 (first published 1939)

ISBN:  978-1-59017-206-3

Awards: 1939 Caldecott Honor

Plot:  Wee Gillis is a Scottish orphan whose parents must have met in the middle because his mother was a Lowlander and his father was a Highlander.  So Wee Gillis spends one year with his mother’s relations and the next year with his father’s.  Back and forth from Lowland to Highland year to year, Wee Gillis develops quite a set of lungs following both sets of instructions.  Eventually Wee Gillis must choose for himself, whether to live in the Lowlands or Highlands.  It’s a difficult decision and Wee Gillis is happy to have a diversion when the bagpipe maker arrives.  Soon Wee Gillis has even more options from which to choose.

Audience: ages 3 and up

Uses: Wee Gillis is a good story to introduce the different topographies of Scotland and the UK.  This is a good book for children who are passed from family to family as orphans or even during custody negations.

Strengths: The illustrations are fantastic.  Even in black and white they have amazing detail.  They offer comic relief to what could be a sad orphan story.  The text even offers visual appeal as it leaves the traditional page width on several occasions to draw the reader into the hilarity of the narrative.

Weaknesses:  The only problem I see with this book is some antiquated language. 

Read Alikes: The Story of Ferdinand (1936) also by Munro Leaf; Adam of the Road (1942) by Elizabeth Gray Vining; The Cat Club (1944) by Esther Averill