This Book of Mine: A Picture Book (Hardcover)

This Book of Mine: A Picture Book By Sarah Stewart, David Small (Illustrator) Cover Image
By Sarah Stewart, David Small (Illustrator)
$17.99
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Fall 2019 Kids Indie Next List


“Dreamy and enchanting for bookworms of any age, This Book of Mine is one to be read aloud, to read together, or to read after carefully inhaling the scent of magic that clings to its pages (for those of you who don’t know, magic smells like books). This book had me hooked with its lovely images and kept me there with its bookish sentiment. I can’t wait to gift this book to my youngest family members or any child in my immediate vicinity, but there will also be a copy just for me on my shelves.”
— Kate Towery, Fountain Bookstore, Richmond, VA

Description


A dazzling depiction of the connection between diverse readers of all ages and their books, from beloved author-illustrator team Sarah Stewart and David Small.
This Book of Mine is a celebration of the power of reading, of the ways in which books launch our adventures, give us comfort, challenge our imaginations, and offer us connection. From new mothers to fantasy lovers, butterfly hunters to musicians, the readers of This Book of Mine all share a common passion for favorite books—whether freshly discovered at the library or bookstore or saved from childhood and reread across a lifetime. A unique gift for bibliophiles young and old, This Book of Mine trumpets a simple truth: A well-loved book in hand brings color to any reader’s life.

About the Author


Sarah Stewart is Shapoorji Pallonji Senior Lecturer in Zoroastrianism at SOAS, UK. Her current research centres on the oral history of Zoroastrians in Iran.

David Small

As a young artist I had many influences coming from some unexpected directions. My mother often took me to the art museum to expose me to culture, but at that time I felt little for the great European masters’ works hanging in their gilt frames. However, in school we had taken a field trip to the automobile factories and when, at the museum, I saw a mural about the car industry painted by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera, life and art fused for me. I suddenly realized the very real power artists have to shape our vision of the world. Here was a painting that showed something I knew about, expressing feelings about the factories that I had felt, restating my emotions and giving them order and form. Perhaps it was at that moment — standing before the great Rivera mural — that I determined to work at my talent for drawing and to become an artist.

Another influence was the hospital where my father, a radiologist, worked in the X-ray department. Evenings, I would go with my mother in our car to pick my father up from work. Often he was still busy and we had to wait, so I wandered in and out of the X-ray rooms with their silent, mysterious machines, through the labs, the darkrooms, and the waiting room, where I talked with the patients. There, at an early age, I learned a lot about life and death and saw images of the living insides of the human body illuminated in the dark. Those ghostly, glowing, starkly beautiful images stayed with me. Later on, in college art classes, I jumped at the chance to study anatomy, to draw and give names to those shapes with which I was so familiar. For the other art students, anatomy was an abstraction and a bore, but for me it was exciting and very real.

A third strong influence was my grandmother’s home in rural Indiana, where I spent my spring vacations as a boy. In those days — before television — we spent much of our time out of doors. In the hot afternoons I would wander through my grandmother’s big garden, or run with a dog named Butch to the bottom of a pasture to hunt for woodchucks. We would rest for a time next to a cattle trough in the shade of some huge willow trees. After dark I followed my grandfather down a corridor of trees to the train depot and watched the steam locomotives roll in and roll out. Back home again, my brother and I caught fireflies in jars and tried to read by them, or we lay around on blankets on the lawn, talking for hours beneath the stars. I’m grateful that at least part of my childhood was lived without a television set. I feel lucky to have known the world as it was back then.

David Small grew up in Detroit, studied art and English at Wayne State University, and went on to complete graduate studies in art at Yale. After receiving his MFA degree, he taught at the State University of New York/ Fredonia College, Kalamazoo College, and the University of Michigan.

Mr. Small’s illustrations have won him numerous awards, including a Caldecott Medal in 2001 and a Caldecott Honor in 1997. He has created over thirty books for children, has reviewed children’s books for The New York Times, and was the final judge for the 1989 Parents’ Choice Awards for Illustration. His editorial drawings regularly appear in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, GQ, and The Washington Post.

David Small and his wife, the writer Sarah Stewart, live in a historic house on a bend of the St. Joseph River in Michigan. They have an Airedale named Simon and a cat named Otis.

Praise For…


“A lovely salute to the power of reading. . .Book lovers everywhere are encouraged to remember their own book friendship, a small ‘treasure for a lifetime’ and a celebration of the devoted relationship between reader and book.” —School Library Journal, starred review

“Stewart and Small celebrate the friendships between books and readers. . .A book likely to be snapped up by book lovers.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Those who live and breathe books will understand the passion that Stewart and Small celebrate.” —Publishers Weekly

The Quiet Place:

“A warm, gentle portrait of an immigrant's isolation and the ways that creativity and a loving family can offer both a safe haven and a bridge.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“A moving, memorable portrayal of one child's immigrant experience.” —Booklist, starred review

“Stewart and Small offer a stirring, backyard-size metaphor for the determination and drive for self-betterment that characterize the immigrant experience.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Product Details
ISBN: 9780374305468
ISBN-10: 0374305463
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Publication Date: August 27th, 2019
Pages: 32
Language: English