Outside In and the Inside Out
A Story About Arnold Lobel
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- ¥1,700
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- ¥1,700
発行者による作品情報
A thoughtful and whimsical picture book about Arnold Lobel, award-winning creator of Frog and Toad.
A Horn Book Fanfare Best Book of 2025
Arnold Lobel was many things: a quiet observer, an avid reader, and the kind of man who kept a gorilla suit in his closet, just in case. Above all else, Arnold was an artist and a storyteller. And he infused pieces of himself in the characters he created. This made sharing his books with the world scary sometimes—but his stories would go on to inspire and delight readers and live on in their hearts for generations.
A rare window into the life and work of Arnold Lobel, creator of the Frog and Toad series, Outside In and the Inside Out captures the iconic creator of some of the most beloved children's books of all time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dispensing with typical biographical details, this tender look at the life of beloved children's book creator Arnold Lobel (1933–1987) launches with a defining moment: a serious childhood illness that kept Lobel home for an entire year, and his later sense that he was "a bit of an outsider, which was often hard on the inside." But this isolation also enabled Lobel to develop his powers of observation, grow as an artist, and read voraciously, and fueled his determination to become a storyteller. With economic, understated prose and gouache, pencil, and ink vignettes that nod gently to the subject's own drawing style, Kastner (So Tortoise Dug) follows the author as adulthood finds him entering marriage and parenthood, becoming a frustrated artist in the corporate world, and eventually finding his way to work as a "professional daydreamer" who "trusted young readers with bold, beautiful words." The inspiration for his Frog and Toad series strikes during a family vacation in Vermont, when he notices that frogs "seemed to smile, as if caught in a pleasant daydream," while toads appeared "quite introverted and dyspeptic." By slowly connecting Lobel's "outside" and "inside" selves, the work provides a powerful example for anyone navigating their own layered identities. Background characters are portrayed with various skin tones. An author's note concludes.
