An adaptation of a Brazilian tale explaining how night came to the land of daylight, bringing rest and refreshment to living things.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In sure-footed prose brushed with delicate poetry, Gerson retells a Brazilian story of how night was brought to earth from the sea. Before the arrival of darkness there was "only sunlight and brightness and heat." When a daughter of African goddess Iemanja leaves her ocean home to marry "a son of the earth people," she sorely misses the cool cover of darkness, the shady mantle of dusk. Only a bag of night from her mother's kingdom can restore her happiness, and soon the earth people come to know the beauty of night. In her vivid narrative Gerson paints the welcome approach of darkness with such feeling that the perfume of night flowers seems to hover in the air. Golembe's (illustrator of Gerson's Why the Sky Is Far Away ) monotypes use brilliant colors to present an exotic landscape, a dramatic backdrop for her jet-black figures endowed with the nobility of gods. The underlying calm of these outwardly exuberant compositions gracefully reflects the story's movement from lightness to the coming of night. Ages 4-8.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 1-5-From Brazil with its long seacoast, hot days, and African ancestry comes this pourquoi tale explaining how night was born. As they did with Why the Sky Is Far Away (Little, 1992), Gerson and Golembe have produced a stunningly crafted book. Readers meet the daughter of the great African sea goddess lemanja and learn of her marriage to a mortal. The young woman loves her husband and his bright shimmering land even though it has no moonbeams, no starlight-no night. But eventually the sight of field workers stooped over day after hot day "hurt her eyes and her heart." She longs for the gifts of her mother's kingdom: the quiet and dark from the ocean's depths, and what follows explains how night came to the land. Golembe uses a kind of printmaking that resembles etching or lithography-the flat surface being Plexiglas on which oils are painted and tranferred to paper. When dry they can be reworked with pastels, gouache, or colored pencils. The result is brilliant, intense double-page spreads with white text on dark backgrounds, black on light. Bright colors are used effectively everywhere. In an author's note, Gerson explains the origin of her retelling and a little of the history of slavery and African religions in Brazil. (One must wonder, though, why the story includes a tiger, an animal not found in Brazil.) Handsomely, dramatically, and effectively illustrated and told, this story from "long, long ago" has both sensitivity and suspense. If picture-book illustrations can be works of art, this is a masterpiece.
Harriett Fargnoli, Great Neck Library, NY
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Harriett Fargnoli, Great Neck Library, NY
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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