Customer Reviews

Gorky Rises

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read this story to my son when he was a little tyke. He's now nearly 20. I haven't read the book in years, yet, lately, I've been thinking a lot about Gorky and his travels away from home, up into the "blue, blue sky". Guess it has something to do with my 3 kids all about ready to take off on their own. The prose is marvelous, full of colorful and descriptive language, the story is beautiful, about the joy and pain of growing up and away, and the illustrations are an added benefit, though unnecessary due to the ability of the author to draw wonderful pictures with his magical use of the English language. Thank you William Steig!

I'm a big fan of William Steig, and we own at least a dozen of his books. This one, however, is my least favorite.

A frog named Gorky makes a strange magical concoction which sends him on an airborne journey. A great deal of time is spent on the admirers as he floats through the sky. He then runs into trouble with a thunderstorm, wishes to go home, eventually figures a method of pulling himself back to Earth (by emptying the magic solution from the bottle one drip at a time). And the last drip in the bottle turns a rock into an elephant.

I like bizarre, and I've even been known to be a fan of randomness. This book certainly has both, and Steig's language is - as always - colorful. But the story is long, drags in a number of places for me, and really never hits the right chord.

I'd never advise anyone to not give a book a chance - clearly there are some who do like this one - but I feel there are a number of books by Steig that are far more interesting and entertaining.

I bought this for a "future time," but our 2 yr old actually likes it now. Sometimes he only makes it through half, but he still picks it out for bedtime. The illustrations and language are wonderful. This is one of the stories that my husband doesn't get tired of reading over and over to the baby.

I like all William Steig books. They are thoughtful, intelligent, funny, and well written. I adore his illustrations.

My almost four year old loves this book - we've read it several times a day since we got it (though I omit parts as we go along). It is a magical story, with random elements - not only in the plot but in the emotions and wording as well, which was disconcerting to me. I feel like this should be a fun, innocent, enjoyable book, but I think that the author meant it to be a bit jarring.

What really brought this feeling home for me was when his parents "were so worried that they were ready to kill themselves just to end their misery." How appropriate is that for a picture book? I skip over this sentence when I read Gorky Rises to my son.

There are two other references to death in the book: one humourous (Gorky "almost croaked" when he saw some scary creatures in the sky, which turned out to be kites); one not so much (if Gorky falls asleep while floating, he will "die with a shocking crash").

At the beginning of the book, Gorky puts a bit of his father's cognac in his magical mixture. Hmmm.

Gorky laughs at his cousin's "look of stupid wonder" when Gorky floats by. Why stupid? A sly commentary on the reader who is also watching Gorky's fly through the sky?

The more I think about this book, the less I like it.

William Steig has learned, far better than most children's authors, how to write to a number of different audiences at the same time. His prose is dense yet lyrical and accessible. The rose attar that fascinates a boy, the hints of Russian and American literature, the psychoanalytic structure of a family beside itself with worry--the merging of all these themes is masterful. Steig takes the English language seriously, from ears to scuts. Don't pass it by!

GORKY RISES is a bit sophisticated for my grandchild who is just 22 months...but the idea is poetic and I plan to read it to her as soon as she is ready.