ALA Booklist (Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 CDT 2014)

Dad is restless. "Hurry up now or we'll be late," he tells Anna. But his daughter has all the time in the world. Time to do marvelous things. Time to swim in the Mariana Trench and fly through the Crab Nebula to a place where the sky is underwater. So, together, off they go to see wonders everywhere, but they can't see Mom. Where could she be? Perhaps she is in paradise doing some weeding. After all, God would be pleased to have a gardener. Or perhaps she is visiting someone she hasn't seen for a while. Mother's absence invites Anna and her father to meditate on the nature of God. "Was he better in the old days?" Anna asks. "Perhaps God's getting forgetful like Grandma." And why, readers may wonder, can't he bring Mom back? This gentle meditation on life and death from the award-winning Norwegian author and artist is graced by beautifully executed, slightly surreal illustrations. Filled with flowers and flight, they tease readers' imaginations and invite them to wonder.

Horn Book (Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2015)

Anna's mother has died, so the child helps her father imagine heaven as a place with flying fish and where "you can take your socks off whenever you please." Both text (translated from Norwegian) and the surrealist art leave much unexplained. What happened to Anna's mother? Are they heading to her funeral? Why all the fish? Intriguing but ultimately unsatisfying.

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

Grief is the unspoken subtext of Hole-s (Garmann-s Summer) exquisite study of a father and daughter experiencing loss. Anna-s father is waiting impatiently for her as she swings in her backyard. As church bells chime in the background, Anna-s father is seen holding a bouquet, looking dejected. He tells Anna, -There-s someone in the sky sending down nails.- As father and daughter begin to talk about God, heaven, and Anna-s absent mother, the reason for her absence is implied but never stated: Anna suggests her mother may be weeding the garden in Paradise, since God is so busy. Or, Anna adds, she may have gone to the library. Hole-s mixed-media collages perfectly convey the wild, almost hallucinatory flights of Anna-s imagination, with images of flying fish, airborne jellyfish, and a giraffe and Elvis Presley half-submerged in water, amid other figures and objects. Even the front and back endpapers become part of the story. The front depicts a rain of nails, the back a rain of strawberries, as Anna had imagined. A gorgeous, poignant book. Ages 6-10. (Sept.)

School Library Journal (Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 CDT 2014)

Gr 3-5 Mesmerizing and surreal mixed-media collages draw readers into this intriguing story of the many possibilities Heaven offers. Young Anna's mother has died, and the girl and her father are on their way to the funeral when Anna begins asking her father questions about God and Heaven. Though he is immensely sad and anxious to head toward the church, he slows down, answers his daughter's questions as best he can, and actually smiles as he lets his child ready herself for the sad task ahead. Breathtakingly stunning illustrations take readers on flights of fantasy that can be both beautiful and unsettling. The endpapers at the book's beginning show nails raining down as the pain of loss is relentless. After the father and daughter acknowledge their grief, the final endpapers are optimistically filled with ripe strawberries in place of the painful nails. Beguiling pictures and stirring text may lead to discussions about death and the possibility of an afterlife, helping to ease bereveament. Maryann H. Owen, Children's Literature Specialist, Mt. Pleasant, WI