In award-winning artist Jerry Pinkney's wordless adaptation of one of Aesop's most beloved fables, an unlikely pair learn that no act of kindness is ever wasted. After a ferocious lion spares a cowering mouse that he'd planned to eat, the mouse later comes to his rescue, freeing him from a poacher's trap. With vivid depictions of the landscape of the African Serengeti and expressively-drawn characters, Pinkney makes this a truly special retelling, and his stunning pictures speak volumes. (Amazon Product Description)Review by Sherry Meidell, Illustrator
You do strange things when you are an illustrator, like stop and study a dead mouse that you find while you are running on the trail. Mice have the most delicate tiny feet. In the book "The Lion & The Mouse" by Jerry Pinkney, the illustrator knows his mice.
The mouse in the book commands the same presence and importance as the powerful lion but maintains the personality and movement of a mouse. How do you get movement in still pictures? Pinkney does it. This is a wordless picture book which is nice because the time you spend on each page is not determined by words and you can get lost in the details of the pictures.
You learn more than the fable. You learn that the mouse and the lion have a family and both are happy to return to them. Each page is filled with fun detail and Pinkney's style is shown nicely on the ivory matte paper of the book. It won the Caldecott Medal and is a book for the ages. "Home Place" and "Black Cowboy Wild Horses" are a couple of other books illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, one of my favorite illustrators of children books.
Book formats:
The Lion & the Mouse (Hardcover)
To learn more about the author, click here: Jerry Pinkney
To learn more about the reviewer, illustrator Sherry Meidell, click here
3 comments:
I want to buy this book. Adding it to my Amazon wish list. Thank you.
Beautiful and fantastic. My girls and I loved this book.
This book really blew me away. When it won the Caldecott, and I heard it didn't have any words (besides a few animal sounds), I really doubted that I could enjoy it, let alone "read" it to my kids.
But what's so cool about this book is that it doesn't NEED any words! Even my 4 yr old can tell ME the story because of the excellent illustrations. It's great to see such a facinating book like this win big awards. So deserving!
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