Few Blocks

Description:

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2011 and a finalist for the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Award

"It was time for Ferdie and Viola to go to school. But Ferdie had eleven cars to wash, the highest tower ever to build and a snake drawing that wasn't done..."

Ferdie doesn't want to go to school, but go to school he must, and fortunately his imaginative older sister Viola paves the way. She tells him to put on his superfast cape and his rocket blaster boots and then off they go! Time and again Viola uses her rich imagination to keep Ferdie on his way. But even big sisters get tired sometimes, and so Ferdie, following her example, draws on his own inner resources andimagination to keep them going.

Told through the eyes of a child, this ordinary event is transformed into a wonderful adventure. The children's fantasy world is beautifully illustrated with Cybele Young's intricate 3-D paper sculptures, created from paintings she made of contemporary street scenes.

Brief description:

CYBÈLE YOUNG is an award-winning artist who exhibits her exquisite paper sculpture (Japanese paper printed with etched copperplates) internationally. She has illustrated several books for children, including Pa's Harvest by Jan Andrews, which was nominated for the Governor General's Award (Illustration) and Jack Pine by Christopher Patton. She has recently written and illustrated A Few Blocks, a Kirkus Best Children's Book and winner of the Alcuin Award; Ten Birds, winner of the Governor General's Award (Illustration); and A Few Bites, which received starred reviews in Kirkus and Publishers Weekly and was named an OLA Best Bet. Cybèle lives with her family in Toronto.

Review Quotes:

"Beautifully illustrated with distinctive etched-paper collages, this is the rare story in which siblings offer mutual support rather than ripping each other to psychological bits...celebrates creative play and sibling cooperation in a way that feels very real." -- Pamela Paul, The New York Times