The Heart and the Bottle
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4.2 • 18 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
From #1 New York Times bestseller Oliver Jeffers, comes a poignant and beautiful story about finding joy after loss.
There is a wonder and magic to childhood. We don’t realize it at the time, of course . . . yet the adults in our lives do. They encourage us to see things in the stars, to find joy in colors and laughter as we play.
But what happens when that special someone who encourages such wonder and magic is no longer around? We can hide, we can place our heart in a bottle and grow up . . . or we can find another special someone who understands the magic. And we can encourage them to see things in the stars, find joy among colors and laughter as they play.
Oliver Jeffers delivers a remarkable book, a touching and resonant tale reminiscent of The Giving Tree that will speak to the hearts of children and parents alike.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When a small girl loses her father, her only parent (Jeffers represents the loss with the father's empty chair in a moonlit room), she decides the best thing is to put her heart in a bottle and hang it around her neck. All the bubbly curiosity that had made her sparkle disappears, but at least her heart was safe. Not until the girl, now considerably older, meets someone smaller and still curious about the world is her heart restored to her. Jeffers's (The Great Paper Caper) artwork is the sweetness in this bittersweet story. Conversations between the girl and her father appear as balloons with images in them instead of words; his answers to her enthusiastic questions about the world are expressed in scientific prints and diagrams. In the final spread, as she sits reading in her father's chair, a thought balloon exploding with childlike and cerebral images alike makes it clear that she is once again at peace. While the subject of loss always has the potential to unsettle young readers, most should find this quietly powerful treatment of grief moving. Ages 4 up.
