The Low-Down Laundry Line Blues Hardcover - 1999

A little girl gazes out her window, and she's got the blues: "I feel as down and as lonely / as an empty laundry line." The girl's younger sister is anything but gloomy, and she sets about trying to cheer up her sibling: "Be-bop a lollipop! / Do you like to hop a lot? / Me bop a-hoppin' scotchin' / Hoppin' scotch with me?" The laundry line itself provides the cure for the blues when the sisters finally turn it into a jump rope. The jazzy text will be a joy for some children and a pain for others less familiar with the style. However, Davenier's illustrations will speak to everyone: she shows the older sister drooping with every atom of her being as the peppy younger sister exudes energy and happiness.
Booklist, ALA

Four horizontal clotheslines, filled with the laundry of a young girl-panties, tights and socks, T-shirts, skirts, and dresses-decorate the endpapers of this mood piece of a picture book. The laundry ripples with the breeze, but the girl finds no movement to take her out of her "hangin' round," "draggin' down" blues. Looking out of her apartment brown-stone window, she and a sill plant look equally forlorn: her drooping brown hair mimics the plant's single wilted stem. Impressionistic watercolor washes in muted pinks, blues, and browns accent the girl's melancholy. Enter her bespectacled younger sister and their spirited dachshund, determined to cheer the girl up. As the older sister stays sprawled on the floor, the younger one, all energy, suggests hopscotch ("Be-bop a lollipop! / Do you like to hop a lot? / Me bop a-hoppin' scotchin' / Hoppin' scotch with me?") or roller-skating, but the older sister's resistance to her bad mood doesn't break down until the clothesline becomes an irresistible jumping rope. Language and line go from languid to lively under the skillful direction of rhythm-and-blues-inspired poet Millen and her artful companion Christine Davenier, whose vibrant loose line puts one in mind of a contemporary urban Bemelmans.
Horn Book

A fine counterpoint of wistful ache and be-bop sparkle informs this story about shaking the blues. A girl wakes to an urban morning, her elemental funk reflected in the lonely, sagging laundry line seen across the street from her window. That's such a sorrowful line./It's droppin' down so lowly/even pigeons pass it by.' Her bubbly sister will not let her mope and tries a little jazzy word music: Sweet potato!/Rutabaga!/That'll work fine!/We can play together/with the laundry line!' Her persistence pays offit's not long before that piece of rope has been transformed from a study in malaise to a Double-Dutch four-step workout. Davenier's watercolors are charmingly atmospheric, perfectly suited to Millen's spirit-raising verse; the two will work magic on any down-at-the-mouth child. Kirkus Reviews