Quiet, respectful, and touching.
The Norwegian philosopher and author of Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy (1994), brings out the existentialist in even the youngest reader.
In this pocket-sized picture book, soft, earth-toned illustrations of a pale-skinned child with black hair setting out on a walk with backpack and dog pair with mostly blank pages and the child’s thought-provoking questions, such as “Where does the world come from? Has there always been something here? Or has it all come from nothing?” Yet the questions are not simply another version of arbitrary conversation starters as in the popular The Book of Questions and its spawn, and the delicate illustrations are not simply pretty pictures to accompany pithy musings. Rather, they work together to tell a story about love, death, and many topics in between. As the child heads into a wood and digs up a box filled with trinkets, sometimes followed by a similarly sized and shaped ghost, the child raises questions of memories, fear, and the future. A short series of sepia-toned illustrations also depict the child’s past with a twin and their adventures together. Though death and grief are never mentioned, it becomes clear that the child is processing feelings through these questions. They provide an opportunity for readers of all ages to explore their own feelings on these same subjects and the world around them.
Quiet, respectful, and touching. (Picture book. 8-12)Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-914671-66-4
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Elsewhere Editions
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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SEEN & HEARD
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