A Book - Hardcover

Gerstein, Mordicai

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1596432519 ISBN 13: 9781596432512

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press, 2009

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

Mordicai Gerstein is the author and illustrator of The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, winner of the Caldecott Medal, and has had four books named New York Times Best Illustrated Books of the Year. Gerstein was born in Los Angeles in 1935. He remembers being inspired as a child by images of fine art, which his mother cut out of Life magazine, and by children's books from the library: "I looked at Rembrandt and Superman, Matisse and Bugs Bunny, and began to make my own pictures."

He attended Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, and then got a job in an animated cartoon studio that sent him to New York, where he designed characters and thought up ideas for TV commercials. When a writer named Elizabeth Levy asked him to illustrate a humorous mystery story about two girls and a dog, his book career began, and soon he moved on to writing as well as illustrating. "I'm still surprised to be an author," he says. "I wonder what I'll write next?" Gerstein lives in Westhampton, Massachusetts.

From Booklist:

*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. Grades K-3. --Ian Chipman

About this edition

• Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1596432519
• ISBN 13: 9781596432512
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 48
• Illustrator: Gerstein Mordicai