An Island in the Sun - Hardcover

Blackstone, Stella

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1782852859 ISBN 13: 9781782852858

Publisher: Barefoot Books, 2016

Synopsis

A boy sails across the sea, looking at various objects through his spyglass, until he reaches an island where his dog is waiting for him. Original.

About this title

About the Author:

Stella Blackstone has written many best-selling titles for Barefoot Books, including the popular Bear and Cleo the Cat series. Her stories have been translated into a number of languages. She lives in the Cotswolds with her three children, two dogs and two cats. Nicoletta Ceccoli was born and still lives in her native San Marino, with her family and two pet turtle doves. Since studying at the State Institute of Art in Urbino, she has illustrated a number of children's titles for prominent Italian publishers. Selected three times for exhibition at the Bologna Children's Book Fair, Nicoletta was awarded the prestigious Andersen prize 2000, as the best children's book illustrator in Italy. Nicoletta has illustrated two books for Barefoot: An Island in the Sun and The Faery's Gift, new this spring!

From Publishers Weekly:

Stylized in an otherworldly manner, Italian illustrator Ceccoli's English-language debut begins as a boy sets sail for a tiny island. "I spy with my little eye a bird flying by" reads the accompanying text, the type curving across the skies of the double-page spreads as if tossed by the ocean breeze. The locks of the boy's hair, an aqueous blue, undulate like the tentacles of a sea urchin, as do the rays of the smiling, rosy-cheeked sun, the tail feathers of birds and the branches of trees. Blackstone (Cleo the Cat) enlarges the sentence of text with each page, until: "I spy with my little eye someone waiting for me on a beach beside the sea and a big tangly tree on an island close to me." The "someone" turns out to be a blue dog, and the island looks as if it's made of plasticine, with cheerful, lumpy vegetation and an assortment of sea creatures distributed carefully over its smooth surface. After an afternoon of fishing, the dog and the boy nap in the sun, near a plate full of fish bones. The last spread shows boy and dog sailing together for home under lavender skies and a watchful blue crescent moon. Paired with the incantatory quality of the verse, the off-center illustrations leave readers with the pleasantly hazy sensation of having spent a long day at the beach. Ages 4-7.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Barefoot Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1782852859
• ISBN 13: 9781782852858
• Binding: Board book
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Ceccoli Nicoletta