One Stormy Night - Softcover

Ruth Brown

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099298910 ISBN 13: 9780099298915

Publisher: Red Fox, 1994

Synopsis

A ghost story about a night on which not everything is as it seems.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Brown ( The Picnic ; Our Puppy's Vacation ) amply demonstrates her ability to craft a mood piece as she follows the arrival and passing of a country storm. In spare, suspenseful text and with rich full-spread paintings, Brown evokes a dog's-eye view of a darkly gothic setting, a looming stone manor assailed by howling winds. As the "iron gate creaks and the black cat hisses," a small white dog searches for shelter during the tempest-tossed night. Brown's realistic illustrations take on a narrative life of their own, capturing the sweeping landscape, the imposing estate and the uneasy animals in inky blacks and warm sepias. At the end, with the storm lifting just before dawn, Brown's palette shifts to violets and then to pale greens and yellows, counterpointing her final, agreeably shivery surprise: the little dog returns to its haven within a timeworn church--animated only by the singularly stormy night, the dog is better known as a stone figure on a carved tomb. Ages 4-6.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

The wind is howling, but a full moon shines the night the little white dog comes in the wrought-iron gate to explore a stately home dating back to Elizabethan times. The cat hisses; the big brown dog by the fire (under an old portrait of three children with a dog that looks like the visitor) awakes and barks; even an owl is uneasy at the little dog's passing. Then, at dawn, the dog goes to the church, leaps up to the recumbent statue of his master, and becomes stone--part of the effigy on his tomb. The brief, quiet text adds some pleasing shivers, but this appealing, wholly benign ghost story is best told in Brown's beautiful watercolors, in rich grays warmed with touches of moonlight and the fire's glow. The old house is cozily shadowed and spooky; the animals are observed with precision and affection. A truly charming, offbeat alternative for Halloween or anytime. (Picture book. 4-8) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Red Fox
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0099298910
• ISBN 13: 9780099298915
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32