Close Your Eyes - Hardcover

Banks, Kate

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374313822 ISBN 13: 9780374313821

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002

Synopsis

A little tiger takes an imaginative journey

The little tiger lay on his back in the tall grass.
"Close your eyes, little tiger," said his mother, "and go to sleep."

But the little tiger is worried about what sleep might bring.
His mother reassures him that once he closes his eyes, he will dream of magical places. And when he awakens, she will be right there, waiting for him.

Alternating between real-life scenes with the baby tiger and his mother and enchanted dream scenes of sleep's possibilities, Kate Banks's simple, comforting text and Georg Hallensleben's bright, colorful illustrations make this a charming bedtime story for small children.

Close Your Eyes is a 2002 New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Book of the Year and a 2003 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

About this title

About the Authors

Kate Banks has written many books for children, among them Max’s Words, And If the Moon Could Talk, winner of the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and The Night Worker, winner of the Charlotte Zolotow Award. She grew up in Maine, where she and her two sisters and brother spent a lot of time outdoors, and where Banks developed an early love of reading. “I especially liked picture books,” she says, “and the way in which words and illustrations could create a whole new world in which sometimes real and other times magical and unexpected things could happen.” Banks attended Wellesley College and received her master's in history at Columbia University. She lived in Rome for eight years but now lives in the South of France with her husband and two sons, Peter Anton and Maximilian.

What can I say about me? That I was born in 1958 in a German town called Wuppertal and that I have two sisters. That I didn't like to go to school because I thought it was terribly boring and I preferred riding my bicycle in the woods, and drawing the landscapes I encountered.
I made drawing after drawing in the forest and in Bonn, the city where I lived, carrying with me on my bike a wooden case with all my art supplies inside: pens, inks, and watercolors, as well as a very small folding chair, so small that every time I got up after sitting on it for an hour my legs had completely fallen asleep, and I stumbled like an idiot, unless there was a fence to grab on to!

Even on vacations with my parents, I passed my time filling sketchbooks and sheets of paper with drawings and watercolors. For me it has always been the most natural thing to do. Almost all children draw, and, encouraged by my parents, I just never stopped.

The same year I finished school, I had my first solo exhibition in a gallery in Zurich, Switzerland. I had written a letter to an Austrian draftsman whose drawings I admired, Paul Flora, and he answered me with an incredibly friendly letter, along with a set of drawing pens, and even a drawing "just for demonstration." He showed my watercolors to his Swiss editor and gallery owner, and I received a letter just as my family was leaving on vacation, asking if I had ever exhibited, and if I would like to do so. I remember waiting hours for the right moment to show my parents the letter. I was so proud.

Soon after finishing school, I went to live in Italy, in Rome. I started drawing and painting more seriously there, and began showing my paintings. I met Kate Banks, who had already published several books she had written. I had always loved the idea of doing illustrations for children's books, and I had written a very simple story of my own, doing new versions of illustrations over and over for the same text. I had showed this at the children's book fair in Bologna, Italy, to a French publisher who seemed to like my illustrations. The story was set in the jungle, and when Kate saw the illustrations, she told me she had written a text that was also set in the jungle, and she asked me if I wouldn't like to try to do some illustrations for her story, which was called Baboon.

Since then we have created three picture books together. I really like to have someone to show my illustrations to, someone who asks me things like "Why don't you draw the lizard a little bigger?"

I always find it difficult to judge my own drawings, so each day when my fiancée, Anne, comes home from her work, she looks at what I've done. When she likes my work, I am happy, because her opinion is almost always right.

I always make many versions of the same illustrations and am lucky to have an editor who will call a halt to this, because a book eventually has to be printed. I always have technical problems, I think because I enjoy having them when I start to see how a certain paint works on a certain type of paper, I change them to see how a different combination might work. Thus I am hardly ever content with what I have done, and the moment a book is published I think what I could have done to make it better!

I lived in Rome, with some interruptions, for about twenty years. Last year, I moved to Paris, where I now live with Anne, and too many cats.

Reviews

PreSchool-Grade 2-Little tiger and his mother sit in the tall grass waiting for night to fall. He is reluctant to go to sleep because then he won't be able to see the sky, the trees, or the birds. His mother promises that if he closes his eyes, he will be able to float among the clouds, play hide-and-seek among the trees, and possibly even fly with the birds. When he fears that his mother will be gone when he wakes up, she assures him that she will be there, and he quietly drifts into the land of dreams. The text flows beautifully from one page to the next and lends itself perfectly to reading aloud. The slightly curved vertical lines of the illustrations create a sense of a moment captured in time. Each lovely spread enhances the lyrical text, showing animal-shaped clouds, little tiger flying with multicolored birds, or the young creature reflecting on what he sees. Richly hued reds, greens, blues, browns, and other colors create a dreamy and soft picture of the world in which the two animals reside. This beautifully written and charmingly illustrated story will be enjoyed over and over again.
Kristin de Lacoste, South Regional Public Library, Pembroke Pines, FL
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Banks and Hallensleben further develop the bedtime theme of And If the Moon Could Talk and The Night Worker, this time with the antics of a restless tiger cub. On a sunny midafternoon in a tropical forest, a mother tiger persuades her son to take a nap. "If I close my eyes, I can't see the sky," the mischievous tiger protests, in a portrait framed by the white page. "Yes you can.... You can even float among the clouds," his mother promises, as a fantasy spread pictures fluffy animal-shaped clouds and the little feline reclining in a half-moon; alternating full-bleed images like this one suggest the listener is relaxing into a dream. At last, the cub squeezes his eyes shut. "It's dark," he says. "Dark like your stripes," his mother observes. Banks styles the text as a give-and-take, while Hallensleben sets the jungle scene in impasto layers of sapphire, jade and aquamarine that complement the yellow-orange of the tigers' coats. Roughly hewn paintings depict the patient mother as a bona-fide predator, and her son as a cuddly fellow with bright black eyes, round ears and an upturned smile. Banks and Hallensleben conspicuously borrow the strategy of Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd's classic The Runaway Bunny, which similarly toggles between reality and reverie, and likewise ends with the mother having the last word. At this book's satisfying close, the son falls asleep as his mother promises to be there when he wakes. Ages 3-6.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

PreS. Banks and Hallensleben offer another lyrical nighttime tale, framed this time around a sweet, conversation between mother and child that is reminiscent of Margaret Wise Brown's The Runaway Bunny. Deep in the grasslands, a restless tiger cub resists sleep. "If I close my eyes I can't see the sky," he protests to his mother. The little tiger has more excuses: with closed eyes, he can't see a favorite tree or the blue bird. But his mother reassures him that when he lets his dream imagination soar, he can see these things and more, and that when he awakes, she'll be there. As usual, Banks' language will delight young children with its delicious rhythms, patterned sounds, and the mystery in the poetic imagery: "Dark is just the other side of light. It's what comes before dreams." Hallensleben's thick, expressive brush strokes occasionally blur shapes and details, but the vividly colored dreamscapes, filled with wild trees, cloud creatures, and exotic locations, will capture young imaginations and reassure children who, like the young tiger, harbor secret fears of falling asleep. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374313822
• ISBN 13: 9780374313821
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Hallensleben Georg
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 40