ALA Booklist

The leaving happened on a soupy, misty morning, when you could hear the street sweeper. Sssshhhshsh. . . . We pressed our faces against the hall window and left cold lips on the pane. This eloquent beginning sets the stage for a heartfelt story about a family as its members pack up their belongings and say good-bye to friends, neighbors, and cousins. Moving is often a bittersweet experience, with mixed emotions of sadness, uncertainty, anticipation, and hope. Seldom have the feelings of this event been so tenderly painted as they are in the rich full-page watercolors here. Soman's brush has a wide stroke as well as a fine point as it captures the essence of a home in bright hues--children's artwork taped to the walls, family photos on the tables, the view from atop the climbing bars where farewells are said, and the touching goodbyes. Related in the voice of a young boy, this story ends as it begins, with lip marks on the windows of a place sure to remain in the hearts and memories of the family members. (Reviewed Sept. 1, 1992)

Horn Book (Mon Feb 06 00:00:00 CST 2023)

A young boy describes the events of the morning his family is preparing to move to a new home. The book perfectly captures the bittersweet feelings that accompany many moving days. Soman's stunning watercolors artfully utilize color to establish mood.

Kirkus Reviews (Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

As in Tell Me a Story, Mama (1989) and other books this team has created, the importance of family gets thematic pride of place here. Preparing to move from an urban apartment, a black family spends more time saying good-bye to friends, neighbors, and relatives (``We said good-bye to the cousins all day long'') than packing. In Soman's large, golden-brown watercolors, readers can follow the play of emotions in the faces of parents and children as they hug, kiss, shake hands, or just speak quietly to one another, until the narrator and his father, pregnant mother, and older sister sit smiling together in a room the movers have emptied, then wave one last good-bye from the street. A gently reassuring view of a common, and often traumatic, experience. (Picture book. 3-6)"

School Library Journal

K-Gr 2-- The time has come for an African-American family to move from their city apartment into a new home. Johnson invokes the feelings of children as she tells in their language a simple story of the ambivalence of leaving familiar surroundings. Illustrations capture the mood of the text in depicting all the joy, sorrow, anxiety, and hurry of a moving day. Johnson conveys all this with the same tenderness as found in her Tell Me a Story, Mama (1989), Do Like Kyla (1990) , and When I Am Old with You (1990, all Orchard). It's a book that's sure to reassure children in the same situation. --Barbara Osborne Williams, Queens Borough Public Library, Jamaica, NY