Seraphin
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- €11.99
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- €11.99
Publisher Description
From Hans Christian Andersen award-winning author Philippe Fix, a dazzling portrait of a dreamy optimist filling Paris with ingenious gadgets, toys, and magical contraptions.
Seraphin, dreaming of gardens full of birdsongs, sunny avenues, and flowers, works as a ticket seller in a metro station underground. One day, after being scolded by the stationmaster for trying to save a butterfly that had flown into the station by accident, he learns that he has inherited an old, dilapidated house. Overjoyed by the possibilities, he and his friend Plume set about building the house of their dreams, and much more besides! Philippe Fix's illustrations, cinematic in their scope, have enchanted children since their 1967 début. In a fresh translation, Seraphin now allows a new generation to experience the wonder and inventive spectacle of the original.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
French artist Fix chronicles the adventures of dreamer and tinkerer Seraphin and his young friend Plume. Rendered gracefully in a new translation by Nicholson-Smith, Fix's winning narrative voice ("You felt relaxed there," he writes about Seraphin's barn, "and you had an urge to sing") is matched in charm by his wonderfully intricate, warmly lit illustrations. Seraphin's job as a ticket puncher in the Paris Metro doesn't last long, but readers get a hint of his abilities when he crafts an elaborate machine powered by Plume's hamster Hercules. Then Seraphin inherits a ruined mansion that he and Plume painstakingly renovate a magnificent spread shows the result, a cross between a lighthouse, a vine-clad Metro station, and a construction crane. New joys follow: Seraphin creates a fantastical pushcart to peddle ice cream and chestnuts, the house's carved and painted images come to life one magical night, and Seraphin invents a mechanical orchestra machine out of scrap. The idyll comes to an end as developers force Seraphin and Plume from their beloved mansion; happily, their mechanical prowess leads them in an entirely new direction: up. This vision of an existence unbeholden to anyone else offers a satisfying escape from the everyday. Ages 5 8.
