The Palace of Laughter (Circus Trilogy) - Hardcover

Jon Berkeley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1416910719 ISBN 13: 9781416910718

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Childrens Books, 2006

Synopsis

Rare book

About this title

About the Author:

Jon Berkeley was born in Dublin when TV was black-and-white and airplanes still had propellers. He was the worst football (um, soccer) player in the entire parish, and his favorite food was spaghetti bolognese. Some things never change.

Jon has worked as a freelance illustrator for a quarter of a century and more recently has taken to writing. He is the author and illustrator of chopsticks, a story about the friendship between a mouse and a dragon, and has illustrated several books by other authors.

He is the author of the Wednesday Tales series—The Palace of Laughter, The Tiger's Egg, and The Lightning Key, which have been praised for their vivid storytelling, humor, and one-of-a-kind characters. Publishers Weekly said of the palace of laughter: "Berkeley weaves painterly details into his depiction of this night-shaded world but also injects an ample measure of humor."

Brandon Dorman lives in Puyallup, Washington, and is the creator of Pirates of the Sea! and Santa's Stowaway, and the illustrator of Jack Prelutsky's Be Glad Your Nose Is on Your Face, as well as Halloween Night, by Marjorie Dennis Murray.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 4-7–When the mysterious Circus Oscuro arrives in the dead of night, Miles Wednesday, a runaway orphan living in a barrel, is the only person in the town of Larde to witness the event. Later that same night, he is approached by a tiger who claims he can smell the circus in Miles. Thus begins a chain of events that introduces the boy to a winged waif named Little, a captive of the circus's sinister ringmaster. Upon Little's escape, the two set out to rescue her friend from the Palace of Laughter, which seems to be far more dangerous and horrible than the name implies. Berkeley's first foray into writing is mostly successful; the story is filled with captivating and ingenious descriptive passages. While the author's habit of introducing Miles at the beginning of nearly every chapter (with definitions such as clean-shirted and cat-surrounded and dawn-chilled and hungry) does tend to get stale, the lively plot and colorful supporting cast are enough to hold readers' attention. Try displaying this book alongside classic whimsical tales such as Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth (Knopf, 1961) or the work of Roald Dahl to create interest.–Christi Voth, Parker Library, CO
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About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Childrens Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1416910719
• ISBN 13: 9781416910718
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432