WaterBridge Outreach: Books + Water recently announced the books in English they have selected this year for donation to the different schools and libraries they support around the world. WaterBridge Outreach is a non-profit that seeks … Continue reading ...
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Trees are so much a part of our daily lives, whether we take them for granted or find ourselves fighting for their survival: so it is perhaps unsurprising that there are many stories from all over the world that feature trees, woods or forests as a central theme or ‘character’… … Continue reading ...
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Set in a grim, grey, arid urban landscape where ‘Nothing grew. Everything was broken. … Continue reading ...
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By: Carter Higgins,
on 12/1/2014
by Nicola Davies and Laura Carlin (Candlewick, 2014)
The Promise is on this year’s New York Times Best Illustrated Books list and I’m so glad it captured a spot. I imagine weeping and gnashing of teeth to pare down a year into a handful of notables, but they got this one so right.
Here you have bleakness. Bare and raw. And a girl who doesn’t have much but the desolate things. The words themselves pierce the brightness.
The people, too, dry and dusty.
And then.
Some seeds and a promise and a reluctant okay.
I pushed aside the mean and hard and ugly, and I planted, planted, planted.
Everything works in this book. The text is exquisite. The pictures haunting and heartbreaking and hopeful. The paper is luxurious. The case cover differs from the jacket itself. Dig in. Look around. Don’t miss the endpapers that start as stone and end as spring.
There’s a little Frog Belly Rat Bone here, in this fragile world in need of color and life.
(Also, there’s a lot of great stuff about this beautiful book here, and this post is so, so lovely as well.)
And PS! Add a comment by Wednesday, December 3rd to this post for a chance at winning all ten of those books from Chronicle. Don’t forget your pledge to #GiveBooks this year!
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