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Library | Material Type | Item Barcode | Shelf Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Avon-Washington Township Public Library | Juvenile Picture Book Hardback | 120791001988904 | J P GER | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
A CHILD IN SEARCH OF HER STORY Caldecott medalist Mordicai Gerstein looks at books from a whole new angle.
Once upon a time there was a family who lived in a book. All but the youngest had stories they belonged to--fighting fires, exploring space, entertaining in the circus--but she didn't have one yet. Walking through all the possibilities of story types Mordicai Gerstein presents her quest in unique and changing perspectives: readers look down into the books below at the characters in their worlds. A funny and touching celebration of books, stories, and finding yourself.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Starred Review. Gr 2-4-If you live inside a book, then a reader can follow your every word and deed-"EEK!"-as the heroine in this multilayered fantasy soon discovers. Every one of her family members, including the pets, has a story: dad is a clown, mom a firefighter, brother an astronaut. The goldfish seeks the sea while the dog is off to investigate odors. Only the girl is without a story, and she proceeds to travel through fairy tales, mysteries, adventure yarns, and historical novels in search of one. Each person and creature she encounters offers the pigtailed child in striped socks a story, but none suits her until she comes up with one of her very own. Humorous dialogue appears in parallelogram-shaped boxes. Aerial views dominate as different guides, one a Sherlock Holmes look-alike, lead the girl on her search. While young children may have difficulty following the many twists of this story, they will certainly enjoy some of the jokes and the humorous illustrations. They may also challenge themselves to identify some of the fairy tales and stories in which the girl becomes involved. And the starring role given to writing will appeal to their teachers.-Marianne Saccardi, formerly at Norwalk Community College, CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Living in a book is a bummer if you're the only character in the family who doesn't have a story. That's the problem facing Caldecott Medalist Gerstein's (The Man Who Walked Between the Towers) pigtailed protagonist-even her family's pets have stories ("It's the story of a dog who seeks interesting odors," says the dachshund. "Goodbye. I'm off to sniff!"). The girl never does find a story she can drop into, but in the funny, freewheeling pages that follow, she discovers what a reader is ("EEEEK!" she exclaims, as she looks up and spots you-know-who peering down at her) and how the universe is filled with story possibilities, from historical fiction to Alice in Wonderland. Gerstein is playing at meta-fiction at a higher level than most authors do for this target group, and it's possible that younger audiences will be beguiled by the spunky heroine and the comics-style dialogue balloons and mystified by everything else. (Why do the family members have individual stories instead of one collective story?) Aspiring writers may be the most receptive: they'll see their own creative ambitions mirrored in the girl's wily willingness to find her narrative voice. Ages 4-8. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Primary) "What's my story?" asks a girl on an otherwise blank front flap. The title page answers: "Once, in A BOOK...there lived a family of characters." Turn the page, and the reader meets the characters: asleep at first (in an amazing black-on-black illustration) but awake and in color on the next spread, off to breakfast and, one by one, exiting A BOOK to attend to their respective lives/stories. All except the girl, who continues to turn the pages looking for her story-and finds plenty of others' along the way. The visual perspective locates readers where they actually are vis--vis the physical book: looking down on the action from a bird's-eye view above the page. Gerstein's characteristic pen-and-paint-on-vellum technique creates a vivid depth, accentuated by use of shadows, that makes the reader feel as if they could literally drop into the scene. When the girl's family comes home for dinner, she is ready to announce what she will become: an author! With that authority, she starts writing... until it is time for bed, and she passes authority to the reader: "Now that you've reached the end of the book, would you mind closing it please? I'd like to go to sleep. Thank you and sweet dreams..." Both character and reader are left feeling they are in the right place, with the right task, and capable. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A family wakes up when you open this book, yawning and stretching and looking up at you. They live right there between the two covers, and now their hyper-metafictive day has begun. Everyone but the little girl has a different story: The father works as a juggling clown, the mother is a fire fighter, the brother plans to explore spaceeven the cat's off to hunt mice. The little girl dashes across the succeeding pages in search of her own story, led by a motherly goose. Gerstein's awkward aerial perspective forces readers to look mostly at the tops of the foreshortened characters' heads and crane their necks to assess busy page spreads. Moments when characters gaze up and connect with the reading audience offer brief thrills, but allusions to nursery rhymes, folktales, mystery and adventure genres as possible stories for the girl hit readers in such fast succession they may well dizzy. The girl's ultimate decision to write her own story until bedtime provides an ending to this disorienting and undeniably clever novelty, for whom the natural audience is unclear. (Picture book. 7-10) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Metafiction for the picture-book set? In Gerstein's able hands, this charming story follows a young girl and her family who live in a book (when it's closed they sleep, when it's open they rise), though she doesn't know what kind of story her book is. Compositions are drawn as if the viewer were looking down on characters and scenes with the page as the ground; at one point the girl looks up only to be scared witless by your face peering down at her. She dashes through spreads that take her into nursery rhymes, on the trail of a mystery, across pirate waters, and even into outer space before she ultimately decides to write her own story, which is, of course, this story. Akin to David Wiesner's Caldecott Medal book, The Three Pigs (2001), though not as complex, children might find some of the finer points of the concept to be challenging; but the conceit is executed with such cleverness and gentleness that slightly older readers who know a few tricks about picture book conventions and don't mind flexing their comprehensive abilities a bit will gather a deeper awareness for the art of reading and an appreciation for the possibilities and openness of storytelling. The little girl's quest is a terrifically sweet and humorous one, and while it rewards deeper reading, it certainly doesn't live by it.--Chipman, Ian Copyright 2009 Booklist