The Whisper
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
The two-time Caldecott Honor artist shares “a sumptuously illustrated fable about the magic of storytelling and the power of imagination” (School Library Journal, starred review).
When a little girl receives a curious book filled only with pictures, a whisper urges her to supply the words she cannot see. As the pages turn, her imagination takes flight and she discovers that the greatest storyteller of all might come from within. Pamela Zagarenski’s debut as an author reminds us that we each bring something different to the same book.
"Surreal, staggering mixed-media paintings make traveling across such beautifully varied and bizarre storyscapes exhilarating."—Kirkus, starred review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her first work as author, two-time Caldecott Honor recipient Zagarenski appears to have constructed a story to accompany her dreamy, otherworldly paintings, rather than the other way around. A girl in a fox-eared red hood borrows a book from her teacher and hastens home, but its words spill out along the way, leaving only the pictures. A mysterious whisper tells her, "You can imagine the words. You can imagine the stories." And so she does, inventing the first few sentences of a story for each of Zagarenski's magical paintings, but leaving them unfinished. In one, an enormous ox lies in a field, listening "to secrets that anyone wanted to share." In another, an elephant floats tranquilly down a river: "Their hundred mile journey began in a sturdy wooden boat." Tiny vignettes of the girl looking at these very images in her own treasured book create the sense that readers are reading it along with her. The unfinished stories may leave some readers with an uneasy sense of irresolution; others may see them as filled with possibilities. Either way, Zagarenski's artwork is irresistible. Ages 4 8.
