Hopscotch
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
When her family must move once more, Ophelia uses her imagination to make magic out of a scary situation.
Giant rabbits with sharp teeth circle the old motel where they are staying. Ophelia can also hear crow-witches cackling from the trees. And when it’s time to go to her new school, she encounters an ogre who blocks the road with his giant ogre laughs.
But most frightening of all is when Ophelia is left in her new class and realizes that everyone speaks French. Except her.
The kids stare, and Ophelia feels like a fish in a fishbowl. But equipped with the magic of a sheet of white paper and a rainbow of pencils, she will find a way to cast her own spells over the class.
Inspired by events from her own childhood, beloved children’s author-illustrator Marie-Louise Gay weaves a wonderful tale of imagination, creativity and resilience as the keys to children’s power in an uncertain world.
Key Text Features
illustrations
Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.3
With prompting and support, identify characters, settings, and major events in a story.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.4
Identify words and phrases in stories or poems that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The child who narrates this dreamlike telling begins the story focused on a beloved dog named Jackson who's tied to a clothesline in the neighbor's garden. The child envisions freeing Jackson ("All I need is a long ladder"), until one day the pooch disappears; only his collar remains. The emotional loss ("I will wait for him forever") pervades what follows, as the child moves to a new town ("Jackson will never, ever find me!") and enters a new landscape and school. Gay (the Stella and Sam series) conveys with perceptive power a contrast between the anxious fantasy of the child's world ("Out of nowhere... a huge ogre appears") and the reality of an adult's ("Say hello to the crossing guard, Ophelia"). Memories of Jackson persist until at last the child is able to tell him "au revoir." Sweetly styled watercolor, acrylic, wax crayon, and pencil images temper the story's moments of loss, centering figures of varied skin tones that look like diminutive toys, while Gay's writing zeroes in on the way the child, whose skin tone reflects the white of the book's paper, uses the power they have to cope with change ("I draw an extra-long giant magic hopscotch"). Ages 3–6.
