A Grain of Sand [Hardcover]

P Page (Author), Vladyana Krykorka (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 6 and up | Grade Level: 1 and up

With the words of England's great romantic poet as their stepping stone, award-winning poet P.K. Page and celebrated artist Vladyana Krykorka enter the magical, mystical world of a child's imagination in a book that will live in the reader's memory long after the final page has been turned.

Handsomely bound and designed for gift giving, A Grain of Sand was originally written for an oratorio by the renowned choral master and composer Dr. Derek Holman and first performed in Toronto during that city's celebration of the new millennium.

Vladyana Krykorka's brilliant watercolours join the poet's words in perfect harmony, as
... a child on a beach on a summer's day
With time to idle the hours away
In the tiniest grain of sand can see
A limitless world of mystery

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 3 Up-This text, originally written for a millennium celebration oratorio by Derek Holman in Toronto, has been transformed into a picture book. Krykorka's glorious impressionistic paintings accompany the verses but this title ultimately fails as a children's book. Page's inspiration was William Blake's "To see a World in a Grain of Sand,/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower-." and her words might work well with accompanying music but lines like "With a wink or a blink an Age is done./Old Father Time is a boy again" seem somehow too sophisticated for the "Age of Innocence." A better Blake-based book for children remains Nancy Willard's A Visit to William Blake's Inn (Harcourt, 1981).
Kathleen Whalin, York Public Library, ME
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 2-4. According to recent scholarship, Marietta, the daughter of Renaissance painter Tintoretto, herself an accomplished portraitist trained by her father, was responsible for works earlier art historians had attributed to him. This bit of history provides the basis for a story about Marietta as a child, which uses straightforward text and beautifully detailed paintings to speculate about her life in sixteenth-century Venice: dressing as a boy, finding friendship with a sea captain's slave, exchanging artistic opinions and art supplies with him, and growing to maturity with the belief that she helped the young man escape his master. Without anachronistic criticism, Trottier provides enough information about social mores and politics of the period to explain both Marietta's need to be discreet and the slave boy's circumstances, and East's paintings are luminous; they are particularly fine in their depiction of architectural and symbolic details. Francisca Goldsmith
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 6 and up
  
• Hardcover: 28 pages
• Publisher: Fitzhenry and Whiteside; 1 edition (March 27, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1550418017
• ISBN-13: 978-1550418019
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,026,643 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)