Twilight Comes Twice: A Beautiful Free-Verse Picture Book Revealing the Magic of Everyday Moments for Kids (Ages 4-7) - Hardcover

Fletcher, Ralph

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395848261 ISBN 13: 9780395848265

Publisher: Clarion Books, 1997

Synopsis

Free-verse text describes the transition from day to night and from night to day, revealing the magic in these everyday moments.

About this title

About the Authors

Ralph Fletcher is the author of many well-received books for children, including the novels Fig Pudding and Flying Solo, and the picture books Twilight Comes Twice, Grandpa Never Lies, and Circus Surprise. He lives with his family in New Hampshire. Visit him online at ralphfletcher.com.

Born in New Hampshire and raised in Vermont, Kate Kiesler began painting at an early age. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and now paints and illustrates full-time. Kate paints with oils, and her rich style has been highly praised. Kate Kiesler has illustrated numerous picture books, including The Great Frog Race and Other Poems. She lives in Frisco, Colorado.

Reviews

PreSchool-Grade 2. In spare, poetic prose, Fletcher describes the twilight of mornings and evenings, those two brief times of day that often seem to have magical qualities. He personifies dawn and dusk and uses images and metaphors to evoke their special qualities and events. The full- and double-paged oil paintings depict a suburban community. A young girl and her dog wander through the scenes, adding interest even though they are never mentioned in the text. Various shades of green, orange, and brown are used effectively to show how the colors of things are transformed by twilight. The personification of dawn and dusk seems strained, and the metaphors are sometimes more distracting than illuminating, e.g., dusk "pours/the syrup of darkness/into the forest" and "hisses on the sprinklers." The pictures speak more clearly than the words. Charlotte Zolotow's When the Wind Stops (HarperCollins, 1995) and Jonathan London's I See the Moon and the Moon Sees Me (Viking, 1996) successfully use art and text to convey a sense of the wonder of the natural world.?Virginia Golodetz, St. Michael's College, Winooski, VT
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A quietly alluring mood piece that focuses on the twilight times when ``night and day stand whispering secrets before they go their separate ways'' at dawn and dusk. Fletcher (Ordinary Things, p. 460, etc.) finds impressionistic images--``Dusk pours the syrup of darkness into the forest'' and ``dawn erases the stars from the blackboard of night''--that Kiesler makes concrete, by including in her lush, light-drenched paintings a girl and a dog who witness the topical observations of the text. The exploration of how these transitory periods affect the lives of people--from children playing in the park to fishermen casting out in the fading light, from commuters to the girl's family, setting the breakfast table--is achieved through an inclusive sensory range, from dusk's fireflies that swim through air to write ``bright messages in secret code,'' to dawn's smell of doughnuts outside the bakery. Words and art coalesce into an invitation to readers to move beyond the page and into their own explorations of twilight. (Picture book. 4-8) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarion Books
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0395848261
• ISBN 13: 9780395848265
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Kiesler Kate
• Number of pages: 32