Product Description

Pearl has new skates.They are real skates(not double runners), and she can't wait to try them.

Pearl inches out onto the frozen pond.But instead of twirling,she topples.Instead of spinning,she falls -- splaaat!

Pearl has new skates.They are shiny white with red tassels,and she loves them.

Will Pearl ever skate in real life the way she skates in her dreams?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #751918 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12-16
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .38" h x 11.34" w x 8.84" l, .79 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 24 pages

From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 2 - Pearl can't wait to try out her new birthday skates, but she slips and topples head over heels every time she attempts to stand up on them. At first, the young rabbit wants to give up. However, after a bit of gentle encouragement from Uncle Jack and through her own persistence, she eventually achieves success. Attractive pastel watercolors show an exuberant Pearl as she dreams of twirling on the ice, yet, a few pages later, readers find a shocked bunny who has fallen flat on her face. Using simple lines, Keller manages to give her characters a great deal of expression. Youngsters will empathize with Pearl's initial disappointment and rejoice in her eventual success. Pair this book with Katharine Holabird's Angelina Ice Skates (Pleasant Co., 2001) for a skating-themed storytime. - Blair Christolon, Prince William Public Library System, Manassas, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
PreS-Gr. 2. Once again, Keller offers a gentle animal story that beautifully captures a child's anxieties. Little rabbit Pearl can't wait for the pond to freeze so that she can use her new ice skates. At home she practices twirls and jumps, imagining herself gliding across the ice like a dancer. When she finally takes her inaugural spin on the ice, however, she falls and then wants to go home. After Pearl spends a few frustrated days indoors, her uncle Jack offers to take her skating on a quiet morning, and Pearl learns to start slowly, stay upright, and enjoy herself. With her pitch-perfect text and uncluttered watercolor-and-ink pictures that seem ready-made for an animated series, Keller tells a tender story about accepting the failures and frustrations that come with learning something new. Children will easily recognize Pearl's wild ambitions, obstinate fears, and then her glee as she realizes that she doesn't have to be "a ballerina on the ice right away." Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Holly Keller is the creator of the enormously popular Farfallina & Marcel, three books about Horace the leopard, and several books about the feisty pig Geraldine, as well as Pearl's New Skates and What a Hat! In applauding her work, School Library Journal noted that she is "an author/artist who truly understands children." Holly Keller lives in New Haven, Connecticut. In Her Own Words...

"Although I didn't realize that I was launching a wonderful career that would develop many years later, I wrote my first book for children when I was a senior at Hunter High School in New York City. Accepting the offer of my Latin teacher for me to do an extra translation to improve my grade, I produced a fully illustrated dummy of Little Red Riding Hood-in Latin, and set in the appropriate period of history. I also didn't know that it would be a long time before my artistic and intellectual interests would work together side by side quite so neatly again.

"I went to Sarah Lawrence College planning to study art, and ended up with a concentration in American history. I earned a Master's degree in history at Columbia University but never gave up my longing to draw and paint. Some years later I took a class in printmaking at Manhattanville College, and it was there that everything started to come together. I was working on a series of etchings illustrating a tale by Rudyard Kipling, and my very wise teacher, John Ross, suggested children's books.

"By then I was the mother of two small children and lived with my pediatrician husband in a rural town in Connecticut. I used whatever quiet hours I could find to put together a portfolio, and what little energy remained to take a course in illustration at the Parsons School of Design. I arrived at Greenwillow in 1981 with a pile of drawings for stories that existed somewhere in my head. Susan Hirschman pulled one out and told me to go home and write the story -- in a week, no less! Well, somehow I did it, and the sense of unity I had felt back in Latin class was mine again.

"Since that first book, which was called Cromwell's Glasses, there have been many, many stories. Some come from my own childhood (frequently changed just enough to make them turn out more to my liking!), some come from the experiences of my children, and, more recently, some have come from the places to which I have traveled.

"In all the years that I have been writing and illustrating children's books, it has never felt like work. Each new book brings me to a place I have never been before, and I am always excited and happy to be there."