Night of the Gargoyles

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Die Welt da oben gehört den Tauben, die dick, träge und verschlafen es sich auf den Gargoyles bequem machen und sich von der Sonne bescheinen lassen. The rotting carcass of a humpback whale is the unlikely focal point of this moralistic story set in the early 1900s. The latest in the series of Bunting's holiday books, this places the story of the Pilgrims in contemporary times. When Carson takes his dog, Jack, to the vet, she informs them that Jack is too fat: "He needs less food and no snacks! Resentful of her new stepmother, Laura clings to a family heirloom, a ""memory string"" of buttons taken from special garments.

Our children really enjoyed making clay gargoyles too – based on the work of The Gargoyle Guy (see Youtube). Wiesner creates his characters and scenery in the book through charcoal shading; this medium really helps to show the mysteriousness of the gargoyles and the talent Wiesner possesses as an artist. At first the illustrations seem a bit daunting but actually work very well in showing the light nature of the gargoyles.

Its language is both economical and rich, its mood a complex blend of the eerie, the sensuous (the gargoyles ``lick the stars with long, stone tongues''), the innocent (the creatures evince a childlike curiosity and a touching, very human desire for company) and the melancholic (they ``have no love of humans who have made them so''). You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The illustrations are dark and interesting but they don’t make you want to explore the text and further.

Although I enjoyed the illustrations and thought they fitted the story well, they potentially would not aid children in staying engaged with the text as they read. Dann würden die sonst so stummen, leblos erscheinenden Steinfiguren erwachen und den gefiederten Schlafmützen klar machen, wer wirklich das Sagen hat. The team behind So Far from the Sea adds a layer of interest to this tale of a boy's ambivalence toward the arrival of a new sibling a baby adopted from Korea.Other new Carry-Along titles include The Wall, Eve Bunting's story about a father-and-son visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, illus. This book, with it's black and white illustrations, is both child-like and haunting at the same time. At night, while the city sleeps, they creep from their perches, clambering to the windows of the museum, where they ``peer,/ nearsighted,/ into rooms where mummies lie/ in boxes, long and thin/ as coffins, ribboned round/ with painted boats and figures. Man kann jede einzelne Zeichnung wieder und wieder betrachten und immer entdeckt man ein kleines Detail, welches zum Schmunzeln anregt oder einfach nur Bewunderung erweckt, für die große Meisterschaft und das künstlerische Können des Illustrators.