Morris the Artist - Hardcover

Segal, Lore

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374350639 ISBN 13: 9780374350635

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2003

Synopsis

You’re invited to a birthday party!

It’s Benjamin’s birthday. The present Morris brings to give Benjamin is what Morris would like to get himself, and he refuses to hand it over. But Morris can’t have fun at a party while he’s holding on to a package. The longer he holds it, the bigger it seems to get. It grows into one enormous nuisance, and the only way to get rid of it is to open it up. Morris’s present turns out to be something marvelous for everyone to do.

With the colorful Morris and the beautiful and funny pictures, Lore Segal and Boris Kulikov have made a birthday party that young readers will want to come to again and again.

About this title

About the Author:

Lore Segal is the translator of The Juniper Tree and has written numerous books for young readers, including Tell Me a Mitzi. She lives in New York City.

Boris Kulikov’s work regularly appears in The New York Times Book Review. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

From School Library Journal:

Kindergarten-Grade 4-Morris can only see what he wants for himself when his mother takes him shopping for a present for a friend, so he selects a set of paints and heads off to Benjamin's party. After the other children give the birthday boy his gifts, Morris finds that he cannot, after all, part with the paints. But the package gets larger and larger as Morris holds it, preventing him from taking part in the festivities. Finally, when the box is about to crush him, and the other children are playing with Benjamin's new toys, Morris opens the gift and begins to paint a large self-portrait. Suddenly all the children want to participate, and they do, creating large and lovely pictures of the toys they have brought, and then painting one another. This simple and realistic tale is made fantastical by Kulikov's bizarrely sophisticated paintings. These otherwise normal children dress like old-fashioned grown-ups; have huge, mature heads; and tiny limbs-they look like puppets. Birds with human heads flit about, paint appears and disappears, and objects grow and shrink in this mad and delightful world of creative play. Youngsters will enjoy the story, take the odd perspectives in stride, and maybe even learn a thing or two about friendship and generosity. Huge fun.
Susan Oliver, Tampa-Hillsborough Public Library System, FL
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0374350639
• ISBN 13: 9780374350635
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Kulikov Boris