Jabberwocky (Visions in Poetry) - Softcover

Carroll, Lewis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1554532663 ISBN 13: 9781554532667

Publisher: Kids Can Press, 2008

Synopsis

The most celebrated nonsense poem in the English language, Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" has delighted readers of all ages since it was first published in Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, in 1872. St?phane Jorisch's stunningly inventive art adds a vibrant, surprising dimension to an already unforgettable poem.

About this title

About the Author:

Stéphane Jorisch's work has won many awards, including three Governor General's Awards for Illustration. He lives in Montreal, Quebec.

From School Library Journal:

PreSchool-Grade 4-Carroll's classic nonsense poem gets a fresh visual interpretation here. In a series of spreads, a child mounts his quest for the fearsome Jabberwock in an "other" world in keeping with the delicious unknown conjured up on first hearing, "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves-." After a glimpse of the hero, the real world shows up in the form of facing oval frames-one containing the poem, the other a Victorian father-and-son read-aloud scene. But from then on, with a few lines of the poem per page, children enter a spare landscape of rattan-printed trees, postage-stamp-sized art, and full-color ink-and-watercolor creatures whose simple, almost cartoonish look echoes Edward Lear's comic sketches. The uncluttered composition of these pages leaves plenty of room for Carroll's words to do their work. Printed in uppercase, in a faintly rune-ish serif typeface, they gyre and gimble, whiffle and burble cleanly across the page. Stewart has not paid precise attention to Humpty Dumpty's explication of the poem as it originally appears in Through the Looking-Glass, but he has captured that wordmeister's affinity for conglomeration and arbitrary meaning, creating his own odd creatures to inhabit Carroll's perfect peculiarities. The slightly removed tone is maintained by a climactic twist: when the vorpal blade snicker-snacks "through and through," the beast's innards are revealed to be mechanical-clockwork springs and gears. Other illustrated editions worth considering-Graeme Base's (Abrams, 1989) signature packed pages or Jane Breskin Zalben's (Warne, 1977; o.p.) delicately detailed watercolors-hew more closely to Humpty Dumpty's definitions, but this new version is a good choice for a younger audience, nicely conveying the lighthearted mysteriousness of the poem.
Nancy Palmer, The Little School, Bellevue, WA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Kids Can Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1554532663
• ISBN 13: 9781554532667
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 40
• Illustrator: Jorisch Stephane