Perma-Bound

PreS-Gr 2-A story told in evocative free verse and graced with exuberant watercolors. A girl begins her narration when she was "no bigger than you are." She describes an old man who sits "in an old chair/on an old green porch" and tells tales of the time he found a falling star, and when he went for a walk and wound up at the end of the rainbow. The child feels certain that the outlandish stories must all be true. Where the text is restrained, the illustrations fairly holler with light and joy. During each of the Starfinder's stories, the palette begins with hushed expectation in black and white, gradually adding colors until the whole page is glowing. This is not to belie the power of Lyon's spare text-it is only in the tension between the carefully chosen words and vivid pictures that the stories' magic emerges. A lovely collaboration.-Rachael Vilmar, Eastern Shore Regional Library, MD Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information. The narrator recounts two of her elderly neighbor's stories. The first tells how he followed a star that fell from the sky. The second is about coming upon the end of a rainbow. Lyon's words are spare, never florid, for an elegantly powerful effect with silence built in. Gammell's art effectively intersperses grays with exuberant rainbow shades.