Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda - Hardcover

Margaret Atwood~Dusan Petricic; Dušan Petričić

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747587248 ISBN 13: 9780747587248

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Children's Books, 2006

Synopsis

Unusual book

About this title

About the Author:

Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1939. She is the daughter of a forest entomologist, and spent part of her early years in the bush of North Quebec. She moved, at the age of seven, to Toronto. She studied at the University of Toronto, then took her masters degree at Radcliffe College, Massachusetts, in 1962. She is Canada's most eminent novelist and poet, and also writes short stories, critical studies, screenplays, radio scripts and books for children, her works having been translated into over 30 languages. Her reviews and critical articles have appeared in various eminent magazines and she has also edited many books, including The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English (1983) and, with Robert Weaver, The Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English (1986). She has been a full-time writer since 1972, first teaching English, then holding a variety of academic posts and writer residencies. She was President of the Writers Union of Canada from 1981-1982 and President of PEN, Canada from 1984-1986

From School Library Journal:

Grade 1-3–As in the author's Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut (Workman, 1995) and Rude Ramsey and the Roaring Radishes (Bloomsbury, 2004), sophisticated wordplay drives this story. Bob was abandoned beside a beauty parlor as a baby. Raised by three dogs, he barked when bothered and would bound behind bushes or burrow under benches. A block away, Dorinda has problems of her own. Dumped on distant relatives when her parents disappeared, she has lived a Cinderella-like existence, dealing with dirty dishes in a disreputable dive. When Dorinda meets up with Bob, she teaches him how to talk, and together they thwart the advances of a bewildered buffalo wrongly labeled a begonia by a bungling bureaucrat. The simultaneous exploits of the characters are shown in Petricic's line drawings. Color is used to great effect–Bob's scenes have a muddy gold wash and Dorinda's are rendered in purple. The witty, albeit ridiculous plot plays not only with language, but also with fairy-tale conventions. However, despite the happy ending, the relentless alliteration becomes tiresome.–Linda Ludke, London Public Library, Ontario, Canada
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About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Children's Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0747587248
• ISBN 13: 9780747587248
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32