A Raven Named Grip
How a Bird Inspired Two Famous Writers, Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
The endearing true story of how a love of birds connected and inspired two literary giants--Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe.
Years before Edgar Allan Poe's raven said "Nevermore," Charles Dickens' pet raven, Grip, was busy terrorizing the Dickens children and eating chipped paint. So how exactly did this one mischievous bird make a lasting mark on literature?
From England to the United States and back again, this is the true and fascinating story of how a brilliant bird captured two famous authors' hearts, inspired their writing, and formed an unexpected bond between them. This ingenious slice of history, biography, and even ornithology celebrates the fact that creative inspiration can be found everywhere.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This breezy animal biography opens in the British household of the writer Charles Dickens, whose raven Grip teases his children, chasing them around the house. Singer deftly contextualizes Dickens's literary fame and his typically Victorian taste in pets. Dickens casts Grip as a character in a novel, and while in the U.S. on a lecture tour, an aspiring interviewer named Edgar Allan Poe is so taken with the fictional raven—and a painted image of Grip—that he eventually writes a poem of his own about a raven. Stylized digital spreads by Fotheringham read like a series of animation cells, with a nod to period costumes and details. The most memorable images represent the raven as an enormous bird with the small figures of Dickens and Poe on its back, a symbol of its function as muse and inspiration. Back matter supplies more information about these intelligent animals, as well as a selected bibliography. Ages 6–8.
