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Summary
Summary
Discover the mingling of past and present in this rich African story following Shadow--featuring delightfully spooky art by Caldecott Medal winner Marcia Brown.
Shadow itself has no shadow...
It goes forth at night to prowl around the fires.
It even likes to mingle with the dancers.
Thus it is both prowler and dancer.
Discover the eerie translation of the poem by Blaise Cendrars about the rich history of African storytellers and shamans passing into memory. Marcia Brown's stunning illustrations in collage, inspired by her travels in Africa, evoke the atmosphere and drama of a life now haunted and enchanted by Shadow--the beliefs of the present and the spirits of the past.
Author Notes
Marcia Joan Brown, 1918 - 2015 Marcia Joan Brown was born in Rochester, New York on July 13, 1918. She graduated from New York State College for Teachers (the University at Albany's predecessor). She taught at Cornwall High School in New York City, where she began her writing career with the publication of The Little Carousel in 1946. She authored and illustrated more than 30 children's books. She won the Caldecott Medal three times for Cinderella, Once a Mouse, and Shadow.
Brown died on April 28 at her home in Laguna Hills, California, following complications of congestive heart failure. She was 96.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
From an African-inspired French poem, Marcia Brown has created a vibrant picture book that packs a new and unexpected wallop at every turn of the page. The words profile Shadow--a spooky presence, a watcher, a prowler and dancer, a mocking trickster: full of life in the daytime when it ""races with the animals at their swiftest,"" heavy when night falls, blind and groping when the fires go out. Brown picks up each of Shadow's moods and guises: from the first opening, a stunning horizontal symmetry of reflected green land, silhouetted black trees and figures, and bulls-eye sun in a striated orange-red sky--we turn to the deeper reds and blues and dominant, droopy black silhouette of the lush jungle that half-hides Shadow's ghostly presence. Shadow slides up behind the storyteller, blue behind the man's hypnotic black form--or, blind and black itself against blue sky, it crawls eerie and spider-like with reaching oversize hands. It is unobtrusively present behind a crouched hunter in a dazzling, crinkly-textured, gold field--then ascendant in the amusing, ""mocking"" spread that seems a sort of muted shift on the same chord. The closest comparison is with Brown's All Butterflies, except that this is more than a stunning portfolio; throughout, there's a rhythmic relationship among the spreads themselves. A knockout. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
