Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Hanna in the Time of the Tulips
Illustrator: Bagram Ibatoulline
Picture Book
For ages 6 to 8
Candlewick Press, 2004 ISBN: 978-0763618759
Hanna loves her father very much and delights in the games that the two of them play with one another as they sit in or walk in the garden. Unfortunately Hanna's father is very busy, looking at, treasuring, and talking about the latest market madness; tulips. Hanna would love to look at the tulips growing in her father's garden but she is not allowed to get close to the precious flowers and must admire them only in the paintings that hang on the walls of her house.
To help her get through this hard, and somewhat lonely, time Hanna has all the people who work and live in her home. There is also Rembrandt, the painter who is a family friend and who is always willing to give Hanna some of his time, attention and affection. If only Hanna's father was able to do the same.
It is only when the tulip market collapses that Hanna's father starts to really see his daughter again and to realize that his real "riches" are not those that rest in the vault of a bank or that grow in a garden.
Painted in the style of Rembrandt the beautiful vistas, portraits and scenes of Dutch 1600's life are a perfect backdrop to the story of the "tulipomania" which gripped Holland for several years. Most poignant of all however is the essential story about how a child helps her father see the important things in life and how she gets him back when she thought she had lost him.
