On Tumbledown Hill (Northern Lights Books for Children) - Hardcover

Wynne-Jones, Tim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0889951861 ISBN 13: 9780889951860

Publisher: Red Deer Press, 2008

Synopsis

"As is always the case with Tim Wynne-Jones' picture books, the author's sense of fun and whimsy both tickles the reader's funny bone and gives the imagination a stretch."-CM Magazine

About this title

About the Author:

Dusan Petricic is an award-winning children's book designer and illustrator whose books include The Enormous Potato and Earthlings Inside and Out. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

From School Library Journal:

Gr 2-4-An artist and his pet rabbit head to Tumbledown Hill, a location that provides a pastoral view for painting and clover for nibbling. However, 26 monsters soon disrupt the scene, turning tranquillity into playful chaos. The painter declares, "It's/much better/to paint/when you're scared/than to faint," and proceeds to ignore them until they've fled. Or have they? On his canvas, the artist has captured the unruly pranksters, who are children, as images in the hillside greenery and the rolling clouds. This book opens with a full page of large, blocked-letter words in bricklike frames. With each turn of the page, some of the word bricks disappear and are replaced by illustrations. The device used in the book is not made clear until the last page, when Wynne-Jones explains, "A story in twenty-six sentences-no more!/And every sentence is one word shorter/than the sentence before." Neither adults nor children will tumble to the gimmick until they find the note at the end. The crossword-like effect of the white blocked text set on top of colorful scenes is visually intriguing but the frenetic exercise in writing and word control seems meaningless. Why the number 26, which leads readers to expect something dealing with the alphabet? Why read a picture book that leaves them with more questions than answers?-Julie Cummins, New York Public Library

Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Red Deer Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0889951861
• ISBN 13: 9780889951860
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Petricic Dusan