Horn Book (Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2001)

This collection from Yolen and her daughter features paired mother-daughter poems on familiar topics such as homework, piercings, growing up, and allowances. The loosely rhyming poems are pedestrian and often trivial, and the mother always gets the last word, which may not endear the book to some readers. Ashby provides scribbly pencil sketches of mothers and daughters of various ethnicities.

School Library Journal

Gr 5-8-Seventeen pairs of poems define the push and pull between preteen and parent as the younger anguishes and matures and the older advises and nourishes. Each two-page set offers a poem that Stemple has written to her mother in a daughter's voice on such sources of adolescent angst as homework, self-consciousness, bedtime, self-assurance, or insufficient allowance. Yolen's motherly response on the facing page is firm, but understanding; critical, but complimentary; advisory, but empathetic. Pencil sketches show girls of various cultures, accompanied on some pages by the sort of amateurish doodles (and the inherent smeary, cluttered look) that might be found in a school notebook. Girls will feel a kinship with the younger poet's words and feelings and will welcome the mother's insights and loving discipline.-Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Mother-daughter team Jane Yolen and Heidi E.Y. Stemple use an inventive (and humorous) format in Dear Mother, Dear Daughter: Poems for Young People, illus. by Gil Ashby. Daughter addresses mother in a poem on the left, and mother addresses daughter on the right, debating issues such as homework, weight, sports and romantic crushes. (Mar.)

ALA Booklist (Thu Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2001)

The poetry here is nothing special. What readers will enjoy are the mother and daughter voices--chatty, warm, irritated, angry--and the family vignettes. Yolen and Stemple, mother and daughter, have always sent each other notes, and Stemple, now a mother of daughters, remembers her preteen questions and complaints. On each left-hand page, a daughter writes to her mom; on the opposite page, her mom writes back. Gil Ashby's realistic, softly brushed pencil illustrations extend the situations with a diverse cast of mothers and daughters, who argue about homework, body image, using the phone. They bargain about staying up late and ear piercing. They help each other through grief and through feeling scared of the dark (I'm too old for a night-light). Some girls will see themselves here, and they may want to write their own family conversations.