My Friend, the Starfinder

by George Ella Lyon Narrated by Julia Gibson

Overview

George Ella Lyon, a renowned poet and Golden Kite Award-winning author, delighted young listeners with Sonny's House of Spies. In My Friend, the Starfinder, a little girl hears a story that she will remember and treasure for the rest of her life. The kindly old man across the street has a wealth of stories to share-and today he has a particularly special one. As the little girl gets cozy on the old man's front porch, he dazzles her with a tale about chasing falling stars.

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

Lyon's sensitive tale, spun from a childhood memory, is doubly ruminative: Its female narrator relates two boyhood reminiscences told her by an elderly neighbor. In the first, as a boy, he follows a falling star far afield. He finds it, "warm and smooth / as an egg straight from the hen." He shows it to the narrator, who "held it tight / trying to feel its journey." The second musing finds the amazed boy drenched with the light pooling at the end of a rainbow. Gammell's characteristic mixed-media pictures fully develop Lyon's themes of cosmic and earthly connection. Planets glimmer throughout, and pentangular star motifs figure in every spread, whether in tree bark, patched clothing or cloud shadows. The elder's boyhood adventures are depicted in a miasma of grays accented with the glowing colors of star and rainbow. Gammell emphasizes the joyous interplay between the narrator (in oversized, peacock-green cap) and her shiny-pated friend by suffusing both with reflected, prismatic light. An author's note fondly commemorates the real starfinder. Lovely. (Picture book. 4-7)

FEBRUARY 2009 - AudioFile

In this simple story a child is dazzled by the stories of an elderly neighbor: "The stranger they were, the truer he looked. And I believed every one." First, there's the story about the star he saw falling as a child. The starfinder retrieves it and shares it with the child, who reports: "It was warm and smooth as an egg straight from the hen." In another tale, the starfinder gets to the rainbow's end, where he reports that his body was striped with colors. Narrator Julia Gibson does a good job conveying the poetic simplicity of this tale, allowing herself time to emphasize its phrasing and linger over its internal rhymes and rhythms. Young listeners will enjoy a conversation about truth and imagination after the story. J.C.G. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171824266
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	03/30/2012
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

Videos