Book - Hardcover

Lyon, George Ella; Catalanotto, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0789425602 ISBN 13: 9780789425607

Publisher: Dk Pub, 1999

Synopsis

A celebration of the drama, imagination, and fun that can be found between the covers of a book is captured in words and art as a girl in red flannel pajamas reaches into the night sky and begins a journey of wonder.

About this title

About the Author

George Ella Lyon, a prize-winning author and poet of more than twenty books, has many accomplishments to her name.

While the Kentucky native is known mostly for her children's books, her work reflects her great versatility. She has authored fifteen picture books. A poet, she recently wrote Counting on the Woods (DK Ink, 1998), which Booklist, in a starred review, called "a gem of a counting book." She has also written three novels for children. With a Hammer for My Heart (DK Ink, 1997), hailed by The Alan Review as "a powerful novel, compelling, engagingly written, with strongly painted characters," was her first novel for adults. She has also written two plays. Her most recent picture book for DK Ink is Book, illustrated by Peter Catalanotto, it was hailed as "beautiful in spirit and presentation" by the Houston Chronicle.

After graduating from Centre College with a degree in English, Lyon received her master's degree in English from the University of Arkansas and her doctorate in English Literature and Creative Writing from Indiana University. She wrote her dissertation on Virginia Woolf. She now resides in Lexington, Kentucky with her husband and two sons.

Both an author and a teacher, Lyon has been a Writer-in-Residence at Centre College and also taught in the English Program there. She works with students and teachers on writing, and she teaches at the Appalachian Writers Workshop at the Hindman Settlement School. Her author appearances have included speaking engagements at the International Reading Association conventions, as well as at various library and educational conferences.

Lyon has written for many magazines, including The New York Times Book Review, The American Voice, Appalachian Journal, Appalachian Heritage, Journal of Kentucky Studies, Language Arts (Interview), The Horn Book, Book Links (Interview)¸ Ohio Journal of the English Language Arts, and Library Talk (Profile).

The honors and awards she has received for her work are many. Her Catalpa, a volume of adult poems, was chosen as the Appalachian Writers Association Book of the Year; Borrowed Children, a novel for children, won the Golden Kite Award (SCBWI); Basket was the winner of the Kentucky Bluegrass Award; Comes a Tide, a picture book, was chosen as a Reading Rainbow Feature; and Mountain won the Lamont Hall Award.

George Ella has a new picture book, One Lucky Girl, illustrated by Irene Trivas, also published by DK Ink.

Peter Catalanotto has illustrated two books for DK Ink, both by Susan Marie Swanson: Getting Used to the Dark: 26 Night Poems and Letter to the Lake. He has illustrated seventeen books by other authors, as well as four of his own: They Painter, Dylan's Day Out, Christmas Always..., and Mr. Mumble. He is at work on a fifth. A frequent visitor to schools across the country, he lives in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

Reviews

Kindergarten-Grade 4In this short poem, Lyon presents metaphors about books: A BOOK is a HOUSE/that is all windows and doors or a CHEST/that keeps the hearts treasure or a FARM,/its fields sown with words. Catalanottos watercolors show a blond-haired girl moving through the scenarios evoked by the text. Many of the words from the poem are incorporated into the pictures; they swirl around the girl and appear strewn across the sky or floating in the air. This is an earnest effort, but the overall effect is pretentious and unlikely to engage readers of any age. We are better off reading good books to children than trying to describe their effect in picture-book format.Miriam Lang Budin, Mt. Kisco Public Library, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This ambitious but insular picture book attempts to answer the question that appears as if written in chalk just before the title page: "Dear Friend,/ Dear Reader,/ Look at the book/ you have just opened./ What is it/ you hold in your hand?" A series of extended metaphors compares a book to a house in which "light falls/ through the windows of words," to a "CHEST/ that keeps the heart's treasure," and so on. Each of Catalanotto's intricately designed watercolors focuses on a girl who appears literally inside the books she is reading, and each splendid painting is filled with light and energy. When she enters her first book, the girl is surrounded by words and images as diverse as a kokopelli, a cross-sectioned apple and a blue roadster. On other pages, she chases a dappled gray horse that metamorphoses into a bird, or words surround her in varied guises, some like mirror images, some repeating phrases from Lyon's poem. Both text and art are impressive on their own, but they combine less successfully than in previous collaborations between Lyon and Catalanotto (Who Came Down That Road?). The artistic urgency of the illustrations seems at odds with the quiet, invitational tone of the poem; in some moments, too, the art appears to offer an independent narrative, one that competes with rather than enhances the text. The arbitrary elements of some paintings and the occasionally abstruse language ("Reader, you are [the book's] weather:/ your tears, your eyes shining") are likelier to distance children than to enthuse them about reading. It's ironic that this book about the joys of books should feel more like homework than pleasure. Ages 4-7.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Frequent collaborators Lyon and Catalanotto pair up again to evoke in words and pictures the magic of a book: "A BOOK is a HOUSE / that is all windows and doors." During the course of the story, Lyon uses the metaphors of a tree, a chest, and a farm, and turns the reader into the weather and the writer into the farmer: "Now you meet / as the gate of the book / swings wide." A blonde little girl in red pajamas opens the cover (or is it a door?) of a giant book and steps into the book's world, which is depicted in richly intense watercolors. The writer/farmer is shown with arms outspread, his words shooting out in all directions and curling to wrap around the little girl in a celebration of the connection between author and reader. This will be an especially good choice for using in the classroom to teach writing. Susan Dove Lempke

Edition details

• Publisher: Dk Pub
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0789425602
• ISBN 13: 9780789425607
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32