Atheneum Books for Young Readers 2009
"Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude puts the fun front and center, both in the lives of the artists it describes, and in its emulation of its titular writer's style." -- Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
"'Thank you for this cow' the story ends but it is really just beginning because readers will want to go back to the words and the colors and the tea and Alice and Gertrude and having bright, sparkling fun with words and colors and tea." -- Kirkus Reviews
"Taking his title from Gertrude Stein's famous saying about a rose, Winter (Frida) crafts a Steinesque 'word portrait' of the modernist author." -- Publisher's Weekly
Gertrude is Gertrude and a rose is a rose and Jonah and Calef are writer and artist. If Gertrude were alive then Gertrude would love this. Children, too? They probably will because the colors are colors and rich in their colors and surprising, too, whoever saw a blue man drinking tea? And artists and writers that children have heard of like Picasso and Matisse and Hemingway come to have tea with Gertrude and Alice whose job is to keep Gertrude happy. And the words are dancing and singing and having tea and being the words they want to be and so are the pictures and there is a cow. “Thank you for this cow” the story ends but it is really just beginning because readers will want to go back to the words and the colors and the tea and Alice and Gertrude and having bright, sparkling fun with words and colors and tea. Publishers Weekly