Description: "Long Pond--clear, reflective, and bent in the middle like a crooked finger--has been a source of joy and nourishment to a Vermont village for many years. But when a sudden late-summer storm causes the pond to swell and burst its banks, endangering everyone in its path, only one person is fast enough to warn the villagers downstream. Spencer Chamberlain...sprints off to cries of "Run, Chamberlain, run!" All survive, thanks to his efforts. But after the storm the glassy pond is gone, leaving the village, and future generations, with something altogether different"--
Review Quotes: Steeped in historical detail, Ibatoulline's elegant, photorealistic watercolors paint rich portraits of all four seasons of pond and people in a 19th-century Vermont village. . . . There's a gentle wholesomeness here. . . Beautiful.
--Kirkus Reviews
--Publishers Weekly The story celebrates a bygone era. . . Graff's appended note explains that events in Vermont in 1810 inspired her story, and she separates facts from fiction. Ibatoulline gives his richly detailed, beautifully composed paintings a rustic American setting. An appealing, history-based picture book.
--Booklist Bagram Ibatoulline is one of a handful of children's illustrators to deal in realism, depicting people and things as they are rather than in a stylized way. This fall he brings his representational sensibility to a story that Nancy Price Graff has taken from a real-life drama in early 19th-century Vermont.
--The Wall Street Journal Based on a true story, this lavishly illustrated and sensitively written story is ultimately about changing landscapes and how something beautiful can transform into another thing of beauty.
--The Reading Eagle