Shadow

by Suzy Lee

Overview

A dark attic. A light bulb. An imaginative little girl.

Internationally acclaimed artist Suzy Lee uses these simple elements to create a visual tour de force that perfectly captures the joy of creative play and celebrates the power of imagination. Stunning in their simplicity, Lee's illustrations, in just two shades of color, present an adventure that begins and ends with the click of a light bulb.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811872805
Publisher:	Chronicle Books
Publication date:	09/01/2010
Pages:	44
Sales rank:	285,888
Product dimensions:	7.68(w) x 12.40(h) x 0.23(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Suzy Lee's books have been published and exhibited worldwide. She is the author and illustrator of many books including the critically acclaimed Wave as well as The Black Bird, The Zoo, and Mirror. Born in Seoul, Korea, she currently lives and works in Singapore.

Editorial Reviews

In a nearly wordless, nearly monochrome fantasy, a straight-haired girl--perhaps the same exuberant heroine of Lee's Wave--finds a secret world in the shadows cast by the light bulb in a storage room. The pages are meant to flip from bottom to top. With the top page held at an angle (say, while lap reading) the book becomes the room itself: on the top page, delicately drawn household objects cluster (a hose hangs over a ladder, the sole separates from a boot), while the bottom page becomes the floor on which shadows are projected. The girl starts out tentatively, making a bird shadow with her hands. As her imagination flourishes, the hose becomes a snake, the ladder a glade of trees, and a wolflike creature manifests; the forest teems with animal shadows, the wolf threatens, and the line between the "real" and imagined realms is blurred. Only the cry "Dinner's ready!" stops the action. Or does it? Once again, Lee focuses on a single idea, develops it with rich imaginative power, and executes it with grace and finesse. All ages. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Lee is a natural at drawing children. Her pictures evoke a timeless charm reminiscent of Crockett Johnson and Sheldon Mayer."—The New York Times Book Review

"Lee is a natural at drawing children. Her pictures evoke a timeless charm reminiscent of Crockett Johnson and Sheldon Mayer."—The New York Times Book Review

"Lee is a natural at drawing children. Her pictures evoke a timeless charm reminiscent of Crockett Johnson and Sheldon Mayer."—The New York Times Book Review

"[A] thoroughly interactive and engaging read."-School Library Journal, Starred Review

"[A] thoroughly interactive and engaging read."-School Library Journal, Starred Review

"[A] thoroughly interactive and engaging read."-School Library Journal, Starred Review

From the Publisher

PreS-Gr 1—The world of shadow is mysterious and magical, where splayed hands become birds and canister vacuums transform into elephants. Lee's nearly wordless picture book pulls children into this place as they watch a girl play in a cluttered storage room. As her imaginary world develops, the real one fades, until the two merge and a dangerous fox, created by the shadow of the girl holding a broken boot, breaks through the gutter and begins a thrilling chase. The book is read horizontally, with images from the top reflected as upside-down shadows below. It is meticulously designed and executed, effectively using the gutter and endpapers as integral parts of the story. Lee uses charcoal, pencil, watercolor, lacquer spray paint, and digital manipulation to create two interlinked and fascinating worlds. She employs yellow to denote elements created in the girl's imagination: a few touches at the beginning, then more as magic takes over. As the action moves from the real to the imaginary, readers rotate the book to see the shadow world, then back around, creating a thoroughly interactive and engaging read. Children will pore over the book to see how each of the everyday objects, such as the hose and the wheels on the bicycle, transforms into a snake, sun, and moon in the shadows below.—Suzanne Myers Harold, Multnomah County Library System, Portland, OR

School Library Journal

An ingenious girl plays with shadows in the attic. Items and actions take on lives of their own, and malignant forces appear. But the heroine prevails: Animals join forces, friendships are formed and all ends well come suppertime. In this wordless tale, Lee once again blurs the boundaries between the real and imagined. Done mainly in black-and-white charcoal and pencil, with yellow to indicate intensity, highlight emotions and signify fantasy, the illustrations are stimulating. The protagonist is drawn with heaps of character in a plain, industrial way. This, in contrast to the sterile renderings of the everyday attic items and the graphic shapes and layered values of the shadow world, creates visual interest. With this tale, the illustrator uses the same conceits as in Mirror (2010), though more successfully, presenting complexity yet leaving the girl's sense of play intact. She also manages—in this era of the digital reader—to make the turning of the physical page a unique experience, one that readers will want to explore, discuss and return to. One hopes, however, she will explore new emotional and narrative ground in her next book. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews

Lee is a natural at drawing children. Her pictures evoke a timeless charm reminiscent of Crockett Johnson and Sheldon Mayer. The girl's expressions and poses are those of a child, not those of an adult shrunken in size. More impressive than Lee's cartooning, however, is her understanding of the properties unique to the printed book as storytelling devices.
—The New York Times

Gene Luen Yang