A Ladder to the Stars - Softcover

Puttock, Simon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0711218250 ISBN 13: 9780711218253

Publisher: Frances Lincoln Childrens Bks, 2003

Synopsis

A seven-year-old girl gazes out her window and makes a wish to climb right up into the sky and dance with the stars. The little girl, now an old lady of 107, is kept awake one evening by that same star who has remembered her wish and invites her to come and dance.

About this title

About the Author

Simon Puttock was born in New Zealand and travelled all over the world as a child. He has had a varied career, from cinema projectionist, to sound engineer to singer/songwriter and cabaret club D.J. He has worked for Waterstone's for nine years, and now runs the Children's Department. Alison Jay specialised in illustration at the London College of Printing, where she gained a First Class Honours degree. Her first picture book was published in 1998, but she has previously worked on a wide range of advertising and packaging illustration and has many clients in the USA. She has also shown her work at various private exhibitions and galleries in the UK.

From Publishers Weekly

uttock's (A Story for Hippo: A Book About Loss) gently crafted tale offers a child-centered approach to the sensitive theme of death. On her seventh birthday, a girl makes a wish to dance with a glittering star. Using language abundant with personification, Puttock explains how "the star turned cartwheels and told the moon about the little girl's wish" and the moon "wasted away to a splinter worrying about what to do." The accompanying illustration shows a now-crescent moon gathered with the star, sun and clouds to plot how they will grant the wish. Jay's (Picture This) buoyant paintings lend a nurturing, comfy feel in their geometrically shaped canvases of luxuriant royal blue skies and serenely smiling, slightly elongated characters. Her unique mix of abstract figures and realistic settings provide just the right backdrop for this spiritual theme. The heroine, on her 107th birthday, climbs a special tree that the celestial bodies planted as a stairway to the heavens, and the climactic painting conveys her exuberant dance with the beckoning star. While younger children may well enjoy this story at face value, older readers will draw the parallels with death and the transient nature of time. Tender in both words and pictures and nondenominational in nature, this multilayered tale will provoke lofty thoughts. Ages 4-8.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Frances Lincoln Childrens Bks
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0711218250
• ISBN 13: 9780711218253
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32