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THE QUIET BOOK

Page history last edited by RichiesPicks 13 years, 10 months ago

14 May 2010 THE QUIET BOOK by Deborah Underwood and Renata Liwska, ill. Houghton Mifflin, April 2010, 32p., ISBN: 978-0-547-21567-9

 

"Dawn is a feeling

A beautiful ceiling

The smell of grass

Makes you pass

Into a dream.

You're here today

No future fears

This day will last

A thousand years

If you want it to."

-- Mike Pinder

 

I love the quiet before dawn at my little farm in Sebastopol.  Awake as the sky lightens just barely enough to distinguish the mountains and trees as silhouettes against the dark blue heavens, I find my mind and spirit roaming free, adrift in peacefulness, alive with joyfulness, and immersed in possibility. 

 

I've known a million flavors of quiet.  There is the sweet quiet of gazing into the eyes of a beloved old friend I haven't seen in years.  The horrible quiet of standing alone in the road, having just learned from the morning paper that John Lennon has been murdered.  The warm, blissful quiet of swimming underwater in the Eel River.  The mischievous, grinning quiet of hiding in my sister's closet as a child, waiting to pull a prank on her.  The world-standing-still quiet of pausing amidst the redwoods as I walk alone through Armstrong Woods on a thick foggy morning.

 

"Last one to get picked up from school quiet."

 

"First look at your new hairstyle quiet."

 

While I agree with those who figure preschoolers to get a kick out of the situations encountered in THE QUIET BOOK by Deborah Underwood and Renata Liwska, I believe that this outstanding picturebook is going to be absolutely revered and longer remembered by any number of six-, and seven-, and eight-, and nine-year-olds who will have had far more experience with the flavors of quiet that are so perfectly depicted here through text and illustration. 

 

"Making a wish quiet."

 

"Top of the roller coaster quiet."

 

"First snowfall quiet."

 

Through an evocative, spare text and warm, expressive animal characters created through digitally-colored pencil drawings, Underwood and Liwska create a series of scenes, any one of which can send my mind off on a journey.

 

"Let the world go by

Like clouds a-streaming"

-- Hunter and Garcia, "To Lay Me Down"

 

Quietly go find yourself a copy of this book.

 

Richie Partington, MLIS

Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com

BudNotBuddy@aol.com

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http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/people/faculty/partingtonr/partingtonr.php

 

FTC NOTICE: Richie receives free books from lots of publishers who hope he will Pick their books.  You can figure that any review was written after reading and dog-earring a free copy received.  Richie retains these review copies for his rereading pleasure and for use in his booktalks at schools and libraries

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