Clara and Asha - Hardcover

Eric Rohmann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1596430311 ISBN 13: 9781596430310

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press, 2005

Synopsis

In Clara and Asha -- as in Eric Rohmann's Caldecott Medal-winning My Friend Rabbit--a simple storyline becomes the basis for fun and sophistication. Clara's friend Asha is an enormous fish, which means that hide-and-seek, Halloween, snow days, and afternoons in the park offer surprising opportunities for adventure. With oil paintings that playfully suggest stories within stories and convey great emotional range, this is a captivating book about the special world of a child's imagination--where a giant fish might come to visit, and the things you do and the things you fell with an imaginary friend are intensely real.

About this title

About the Author

Eric Rohmann won the Caldecott Medal for My Friend Rabbit, and a Caldecott Honor for Time Flies. He is also the author and illustrator of A Kitten Tale and The Cinder-Eyed Cats, among other books for children. He has illustrated many other books, including Last Song, based on a poem by James Guthrie, and has created book jackets for a number of novels, including His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman.
Rohmann was born in Riverside, Illinois in 1957. He grew up in Downers Grove, a suburb of Chicago. As a boy, he played Little League baseball, read comic books, and collected rocks and minerals, insects, leaves, and animal skulls.
Rohmann has his BS in Art and an MS in Studio Art from Illinois State University, and an MFA in Printmaking/Fine Bookmaking from Arizona State University. He also studied Anthropology and Biology. He taught printmaking, painting, and fine bookmaking at Belvoir Terrace in Massachusettes and introductory drawing, fine bookmaking, and printmaking at St. Olaf College in Minnesota.
He lives in a suburb of Chicago.

Reviews

PreSchool-Grade 1–With his characteristically spare story line and larger-than-life visuals, Rohmann returns to the concept (and nearly identical form) of an inanimate fish that becomes a living playmate, first introduced in The Cinder-Eyed Cats (Crown, 1997). The tale opens at Clara's bedtime, when an enormous fish glides through her window. The creature is an acquaintance from a sculpture in the park. Ensuing scenes depict Clara and Asha playing ball, stalling during bath time, and coordinating costumes at Halloween. A climactic finale depicts Clara floating on bubbles out of her room and soaring with her protective companion, a situation calling for the artist's signature panoramic perspectives. When an offstage mom suggests that her daughter go to sleep, an alligator shadow on her bedspread hints that the party is not quite over. The oil paintings portray a natural world in all its glorious seasons, brimming with mystery and delight, where time spent with a friend is one of life's greatest joys. Children will revel in the opportunity to see their dreams and longings realized so enchantingly.–Wendy Lukehart, Washington DC Public Library
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PreS-Gr. 2. Rohmann, who won the 2003 Caldecott Medal for the bold relief prints that illustrated his book My Friend Rabbit, switches to sweeping acrylic paintings in this archetypal tale of imaginary escape. With few words, young, pajama-clad Clara introduces Asha, an enormous, smiling blue fish that appears through her bedroom window when she can't sleep. "We met in the park," she says, and a double-page picture shows her gazing at a fish-shaped water fountain. In the following spreads, Asha gloriously comes to life, and together the friends play outside and in, and, finally, soar through the quiet, thrilling evening sky. Once home, Clara tries sleep again, until she's visited by a new animal friend--an alligator resembling a stuffed toy from a previous image. The words, though elegantly spare, are secondary to the pictures; there's little story here. The artwork, however, is magnificent. Children will easily recognize the empowering freedom from enforced routine that Clara's adventures bring, as well the little girl's very real affection for magical friends. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1596430311
• ISBN 13: 9781596430310
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 40