perfectly matches the beauty of the original song by Peter, Paul, and Mary. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. The book comes packaged together with a CD of the song performed by Peter and his daughter Bethany, but I can't tell you anything about the recording because I bought this book used and the CD was not included.The song has always made me cry a little bit, and this book did the same. As I've mentioned before, I'm a sucker for growing-up or cycle-of-life stories, and this certainly is one. Jackie has so much fun with Puff, and then grows up and stops playing with him. This book adds a happy ending to the story, though. The words are the same as in the song, but on the final chorus, the illustrations show a new little girl coming to play with Puff. The last page reveals a grown-up Jackie Paper peeking in on the scene, implying that the girl is his daughter.
The illustrations in this book are unbelievably beautiful. The front cover image really does not do justice to the illustrations, and Amazon doesn't have a look-inside feature for this book, so you'll have to take my word for it. They are stunning. The inside covers show maps of the land of Honalee. The pages are gorgeous fantasy paintings that combine realistic and fantastical elements to create the effect that you're truly seeing inside Jackie's imagination. There are many details and hidden elements throughout: fairies, buildings in the distance, rocks that look like faces. I haven't read the book enough times to notice even half of them, I'm sure.
This is quite a sad story, with a deep friendship breaking up as Jackie grows older, and I was a little bit concerned about presenting it to Charlie. And indeed, Charlie was upset when we first read it. He kept asking me why Jackie and Puff are not friends any more. We talked about it at length, discussing how Jackie grew up and dragons are friends with little kids, not grown-ups. I pointed out the little girl who comes to be Puff's new friend, and explained that Jackie is her dad. I don't think Charlie understands exactly what's going on, but he's not traumatized by it. He likes to point out the little girl's dad hiding behind the tree, but I don't think he makes the connection yet that the dad is Jackie as a grown-up. Still, Charlie requests the book frequently and loves the pictures and the song, and he will certainly grow into it.
I adore this book. It's very emotional for me, so it's difficult to explain exactly what I love about it so much. The story is sad yet sweet, the pictures are beautiful, and the song is a folk classic, but together these elements add up to something even more.
No comments:
Post a Comment