Counting Stars - Hardcover

David Almond

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1444934244 ISBN 13: 9781444934243

Publisher: Hachette Children's Group, 2016

Synopsis

These beautifully-written stories grow out of David Almond's childhood in the streets and fields of Tyneside. They're funny and sad, realistic and strange, and are suffused with a profound sense of mystery and wonder. They show that the ordinary world is filled with extraordinary possibilities, that the local really does contain the universal.

In Counting Stars David Almond tackles the themes common to his work - joy, darkness, love, death and identity - with exquisite sensitivity and tenderness. A must-read for Almond fans everywhere.

From the author of the modern children's classic Skellig - winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Book Award. David Almond won the 2015 Guardian Children's Book Prize with A Song for Ella Grey.

About this title

Review

In the elegant, hypnotic, thoroughly engaging Counting Stars, British author David Almond, winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for Kit's Wilderness and a Printz honor for Skellig, shares a collection of stories about his childhood "in a small steep town overlooking the River Tyne." Echoing the bright, witty banter of his large family in pages of fascinating dialogue, Almond recounts tales of his Catholic upbringing (where counting stars in the sky past 100 is a blasphemous attempt to know the unknown), the deaths of his father and sister, poignant stories of local boys and girls with bitter plights, a lonely old woman who keeps her lost baby in a jar, stolen kisses, whispered rumors, dreams of angels, sensual memories of warm grass and sunshine, lemon curd and marmalade. The stories are not chronological, but thematic, and they are simply beautiful. No one captures the mysticism of childhood like Almond, and his readers will be overjoyed to see the ways in which his own history is mirrored in the odd, magical worlds created in his novels. In the author's words, the stories "merge memory and dream, the real and the imagined, truth and lies. And, perhaps, like all stories, they are an attempt to reassemble what is fragmented, to rediscover what has been lost." Almond paints a landscape of the soul and shows his readers the magic of humanity. It seems he can do no less! (Ages 13 and older) --Karin Snelson

From the Inside Flap

’s extraordinary novels have established him as an author of unique insight and skill. These stories encapsulate his endless sense of mystery and wonderment, as they weave a tangible tapestry of growing up in a large, loving family. Here are the kernels of his novels—joy and fear, darkness and light, the
healing power of love and imagination in overcoming the wounds of ignorance and prejudice. These stories merge memory and dream, the real and the imagined, in a collection of exquisite tenderness.
From the Hardcover edition.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hachette Children's Group
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1444934244
• ISBN 13: 9781444934243
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288