How to use this Page

PaperTigers is pleased to announce that A Child’s Garden: A Story of Hope is one of the three books included in the 2011 Spirit of PaperTigers book set.

Michael Foreman,
A Child’s Garden: A Story of Hope
Walker Books / Candlewick Press, 2009.

Ages 5-11

A Child’s Garden: A Story of Hope is a timeless fable with particular relevance for today’s young readers.  Michael Foreman, one of the UK’s foremost illustrators and storytellers, has created a masterpiece that combines uncluttered but meaningful prose with beautiful watercolors in contrasting monochrome and joyous, unstoppable color.

A boy finds a “speck of green” among the rubble that is the bleak, monochrome landscape of his home, and nurtures it with almost desperate care.  His world is separated from the outside by a tall, barbed wire fence: but as the plant grows, it covers the fence, bringing welcome shade, and birds and butterflies.  Other children come there to play and help care for the sturdy vine. Then the unthinkable happens.  Soldiers from the other side of the wire rip the vine away, leaving it to die in a ditch.  Color has once again gone out of the world.  The boy’s heartbreak is palpable.

Life continues through a joyless, cold winter but spring brings with it new growth – on the other side of the fence.  A girl appears and nurtures the plants in her turn, under the disinterested eyes of the soldiers.  Soon there are shoots on the boy’s side too.  Tendrils meet and entwine across the fence, and children on both sides come together to play and tend the vine.  The boy realises that it will grow despite the soldiers’ efforts to destroy it – and in the same way, the fence itself will one day disappear.  The seeds for that have been sown.

Perfectly honed for young children, A Child’s Garden also has much to offer older readers.  At first glance, Foreman’s use of monochrome versus the color of the vine and the life it attracts seems very clear cut.  However, a deeper reading, picking out details in the illustrations especially, provides provoking food for thought, reinforcing the tenacity of the seeds of hope not only sown in the boy’s heart but spreading and growing elsewhere. Foreman’s virtuoso illustrations draw out the story’s multilayered complexity and provide wordless stimuli for readers to put out their own tendrils of hope for the future.

A Child’s Garden is a moving, empowering read that, like all good fables, will leave a lasting, deep-rooted impression on its readers.

Marjorie Coughlan
September 2011

The Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children’s Literature is pleased to state that registrations are still being accepted  for the following conference:

“Peace the World Together with Children’s Books” is the theme of the International Board on Books for Young People regional conference hosted by California State University, Fresno this fall.

Co-sponsored by the Arne Nixon Center at Fresno State, IBBY’s 9^th United States Regional Conference will be held at Fresno State on Oct. 21-23.

Conference chair Ellis Vance of Fresno said about 250 people – professors, librarians, teachers, authors, illustrators, publishers, collectors and fans – are expected. Registration so far includes participants from 48 states and every continent except Antarctica, Vance said.

The conference offers an opportunity to interact with authors and illustrators around the world, including Alma Flor Ada, Shirin Yim Bridges, F. Isabel Campoy, David Diaz, Margarita Engle, Kathleen Krull, Grace Lin, Roger Mello, Beverly Naidoo, Pam Muñoz Ryan and Peter Sis. Petunia’s Place Bookstore will sell books.

Activities will include exhibitions (including one by the International Youth Library), book discussion groups and tours. Optional activities are available to those who stay on beyond the conference closing at noon on Oct. 23. They include a tour of the Shinzen Japanese Garden in Fresno and a one-day bus trip to Yosemite National Park.

For information on the conference and registration visit www.usbby.org/conf_home.htm.