Mouse Bird Snake Wolf - Hardcover

David Almond is the acclaimed author of Skellig, winner of the Whitbread Children's Award and the Carnegie Medal; Kit's Wilderness, winner of the Smarties Award Silver Medal, Highly Commended for the Carnegie Medal and shortlisted for the Guardian Award; and The Fire-Eaters, winner of the Whitbread Award, the Smarties Gold Award and shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. He has also collaborated with Polly Dunbar on the highly acclaimed My Dad's a Birdman and The Boy Who Climbed into the Moon. David lives in Hexham, Northumberland with his wife and daughter. www.davidalmond.com Dave McKean is a world-renowned artist, designer and film director who has illustrated several books for children, including The Savage and Slog's Dad, both by David Almond. He has also collaborated with Neil Gaiman on Coraline, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish and The Wolves in the Wall, as well as the Newbery Medal-winning The Graveyard Book. Dave McKean has more recently illustrated Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck Cookbook and directed two feature films, MirrorMask and Luna. He lives in Tenterden, Kent with his wife and two children. www.davemckean.com

Gr 2-6-In this original creation myth, set "long ago and far away, in a world rather like this one," the gods have left some things unfinished. Having created mountains, camels, people, and other phenomena, they are now prone to enjoying naps and teatime in the clouds more than work. Yet, there are "places that were filled with emptiness." Almond's potent text and McKean's otherworldly caricatures create a magic that is all-absorbing. Text and image are more tightly connected in this hybrid format than in previous collaborations. Often they are contained together in panels of varying sizes and shapes. Sometimes the words are overlaid on pictures or a sentence or paragraph is framed by the full-page composition. The design propels readers through the story of Harry, Sue, and Little Ben, who, when bored with the world they know, start imagining and then fashioning new creatures. Each animal, made from materials at hand and called to life by the children's commands, gets progressively larger and more threatening until Harry's wolf gobbles up the two older children. Realizing that the gods are no help, Ben addresses the danger by unmaking the beast and rescuing the youth within. The ending leaves an opening for trouble to rise again. Almond's mythic and folkloric elements, wrapped in his own fertile imagination, combine with McKean's expressionistic illustrations to produce a whole that reveals the beauty and terror encountered in the created world and in the human spirit.-Wendy Lukehart, District of Columbia Public Libraryα(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.