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Summary
Summary
"[A] dazzling vision of the way art transcends the everyday." -- Publishers Weekly , STARRED REVIEW
On a gray and crowded city sidewalk, a child discovers a book. That evening, the child begins to read and is immediately carried beyond the repetitive sameness of an urban skyscape into an untamed natural landscape. The child experiences a moment of true joy, and as if in response to that single blissful moment, people seem to come alive in all the other rooms of the apartment block. Thanks to the power of one book, an entire society is transformed.
In creating this book, Geraldo Valério was inspired by the German Expressionist group known as Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), which formed in Munich in 1911 and included painters Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky. These artists sought to find the spiritual significance in art, with an emphasis on form and color. In turn, Valério has created a wordless book that speaks volumes about how art can transform us beyond the sometimes-dreary world of the everyday.
Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.1
Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
Author Notes
Geraldo Valério was born in Brazil, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in Drawing, followed by a Master of Arts at New York University. His many highly acclaimed books include My Book of Birds (described in Booklist as "striking and beautiful"); At the Pond (two starred reviews); Friends (one starred review); Blue Rider (two starred reviews); Turn On the Night (three starred reviews) and The Egg (two starred reviews). His work has been published in many countries, including Canada, the US, Brazil, Portugal, France, the UK and China. Geraldo lives in Toronto.
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 2-Colors and shapes dominate the imaginative romp of a city girl. The wordless story opens with a child peering out of her high-rise apartment. She ventures outdoors into mobs of busy people of all ages, and comes upon an abandoned blue book featuring a jumping horse on its cover. She embraces it, takes it home, and reads it in her stark bedroom. Valério gives viewers a close-up of the steed with rainbow mane and tail. The heroine imagines the horse flying over the city, dropping brightly colored shapes across the sky like confetti. As the horse speeds up on following spreads, the shapes grow larger and more varied until they finally block out the horse entirely. Several pages follow, each overflowing with abstract blocks that finally release the horse, with the child on its back. At last, she is shown asleep in her room, which is now transformed with the shapes and colors she's dreamed up. The contrast of the city's earth tones and repetitive shapes deftly contrasts with the bliss of brightness that comes later. VERDICT Art teachers should employ this for student inspiration. -Gay Lynn Van Vleck, Henrico County Library, Glen Allen, VA © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
This wordless story opens with a spread of city buildings in quiet blues and grays. A girl stands at an apartment window surrounded by dozens of identical windows. Venturing outside, she's jostled by crowds of people staring at their phones, listening to music, or walking their dogs and babies. Suddenly, she spots a book on the street, picks it up, and holds it close. That night in bed she opens it; readers view it with her. Across its pages gallops a blue horse with mane and tail like fireworks-orange, yellow, magenta. It leaps from the pages and across the city sky, shedding shapes of turquoise, magenta, and lime. The colors and shapes that make up the horse grow bigger and brighter, dissolving into increasingly abstract collages. At last the girl is seen on the horse herself, galloping away. Back in her room, she closes her eyes in blissful reflection. Like an urban companion to his rural dreamscape adventure, Turn on the Night, Valério's fantasy offers the girl all the splendor that's missing from her cookie-cutter surroundings. It's a dazzling vision of the way art transcends the everyday. Ages 4-7. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
In this wordless picture book by Valerio (Turn on the Night, rev. 1/17), a young girl living in a rather somber city finds a book on the sidewalk, takes it back to her monochrome, soulless apartment complex, and is transported by the explosive color and energy she finds within. The title seems to refer to the early-twentieth-century Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) artistic movement, which was characterized by its expressionism and freedom, and that reference is borne out in the illustrations here of the book-within-the-book. That books cover features a blue horse. As its pages turn, the blue horse jumps into the sky, a trail of color behind it, and subsequent spreads become increasingly abstract until they are a vibrant and electric assemblage of cut and torn geometric shapes. And from that brilliant collage the blue horse, now with the girl reader on its back, descends and returns to the city streets. The final spreads show the girl in her same apartment in its same nondescript block, but now thrumming with its own vivid geometric display, exuding happiness. While knowledge of the historical artistic movement may add meaning, it is in no way necessary; indeed, this book simply and persuasively speaks to the power of art to brighten and illuminate our lives, no matter how or where we find it. thom barthelmess (c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
In the double-page spread immediately following the endpapers, the gazes of readers shift from a cityscape to a pale girl peering out of a skyscraper. Her story unfolds in wordless double-page spreads rendered in pen, colored pencil, acrylics, and collage. Initially the paletteincluding skin toneis limited to dull blues, grays, creams, tans, and oranges. This lends a somewhat surreal effect to the sidewalk crowd, most of whom are distracted with screens or headphones. As the child steps outside, her blue clothing becomes brighter, and a related shade seems to be seeping from wall to pavement. She spies a book with a blue horse on the cover and picks it up, smiling. Back in her drab room, the animal leaps off the page into the sky, scattering a rainbow of torn paper shapes across the pages. As the horse races, an exciting explosion of colorful contours suggesting flowers and butterflies becomes ever more abstract until it becomes a fusion of forms. From these the horse and rider emerge. The final sequences return readers to her room, now transformed. This will be a fresh narrative experience for those who rely on text or realism to guide meaning. It is well worth turning back to grapple with potential intent. Valrio excels at conveying the pure joy of color and form and, not incidentally, the ability of art and books to lift us up and away. (Picture book. 3-6) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Valério's book begins with a cityscape in blues and grays, then zeroes in on a girl gazing out her lackluster apartment window. As she leaves her building, she steps onto a sidewalk filled with mainly expressionless people, many plugged into their cell phones or earphones as they go about their day. The girl notices a discarded book lying on the pavement with a leaping blue horse on the cover. She picks it up, holds it lovingly and smiles for the first time. After returning to her room, the child opens the book and sees the magnificent blue horse with its colorful mane and tail, and her imagination is ignited. The illustrations, in pen and colored pencil, acrylic, and collage, fill the pages with bright geometric shapes and torn paper. The child beams as the book's magic takes over, and her room, which has been dreary and almost colorless, becomes brilliantly hued. Here is a tribute to art, to books, and to the power of the imagination.--Owen, Maryann Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Why are we so sure that reading books to kids is a valorous act, far superior to cuing up the nefarious iPad? Yes, story time can be tender, and the iPad a mechanized babysitter. But my kids - in the glassy absorption they display, and their addict's insistence on "another!" whenever the current entertainment concludes - can seem as mindlessly hooked on the narrative technology of the picture book as on the exploits of the PAW Patrol. Four new picture books make inventive use of that sturdy old technology as they tell stories for kids living modern, computer-saturated childhoods. Some of these books are skeptical about the value of our wires and devices, while others embrace the possibilities change may bring. UNPLUGGED (SCHOLASTIC, 32 PP., $17.99; ages 3 to 7), written and illustrated by Steve Antony, is in the former camp; it's a gorgeous piece of propaganda for going outside. Our hero is Blip, a sweet, squareheaded robot with goggly eyes and a cheerful smile. In a suite of grayscale pages featuring cables, monitors and pixelated images on screens, Blip revels in the pleasures her computer brings. She plays counting and singing games, watches jugglers and waterfalls, and falls asleep contented by a charcoal-hued screen saver of the sun going down. Then, Blip trips and falls down the stairs, bouncing out her front door and into a technicolor wonderland where three forest creatures (including dead ringers for Bambi and Thumper, plus a duck) help her explore nature. Antony's use of vivid but gentle color here conveys the full spectrum of joy Blip discovers. As it turns out, her favorite computer pursuits - counting and singing, juggling and exploring - can all be done with friends outdoors. Vibrant scenes that slyly mirror each online activity depicted in the first half of the book reinforce the point. If that point feels slightly simplistic - for most kids, mere exposure to a tree swing does not result in the total renunciation of modern technology - the book is so elegantly illustrated and cleverly conceived, and Blip so charming, that you won't mind. One person who might reject this Luddite message, though, is Charlotte, the protagonist of Shanda McCloskey's DOLL-E 1.0 (LITTLE, BROWN, 42 PP., $18.99; AGES 4 TO 8). Charlotte has electric blue hair, a pet dog named Blutooth and a holster for her drill attached to her desk. She spends her time trying out virtual reality headsets and troubleshooting her parents' computer woes while they watch news reports investigating whether kids are "too techy." Then she's given a doll. For a tinkerer like Charlotte, this "human-shaped pillow" is a disappointing gift, It's useless as a playmate; it can't dance or build things or do anything at all except say the word "mama," a role Charlotte rejects. ("How can 1 be your mama?" she asks. "I'm just a kid.") But then Charlotte realizes any toy that can talk must have a "power supply," and she sets to work, retooling the doll to be the souped-up companion she's dreamed of. "Doll-E 1.0" is McCloskey's debut, and it's a vigorous, witty and valuable addition to the still too-small shelf of books about girls and engineering. Where titles like "Rosie Revere, Engineer" feature characters struggling to find the confidence to experiment and build, Charlotte wears her technical prowess with brisk nonchalance, which allows McCloskey to tell a more complex and surprising story. Charlotte's power is a given. The fact that it stems from her facility with things electrical - literal power - is underscored by McCloskey's animated illustrations. The pages are enlivened with bolts of high-voltage yellow, and they lovingly record the detritus of our electrified lives: There are more cords, wires, outlets, plugs and batteries here than you typically see in the sylvan tableaus of kiddie lit. Before we were so wired, however, we had the subject of Samantha Berger's new picture book, SNAIL MAIL (RUNNING PRESS, 32 PP., $17.99; AGES 3 ?? 6), illustrated by Julia Patton. In this fantastical ode to the United States Postal Service, Berger posits that before email, actual snails were responsible for transporting physical letters to and fro. We meet four intrepid gastropods charged with bringing a love letter from a girl in Santa Monica to a boy in New York. At times the snails heave the letter aloft with great effort, each taking a corner; at others they ride it like a magic carpet, in cahoots with sparrows who carry it across a few states. Patton's layered images evoke the pleasures of paper. We see fragments of maps, envelopes and graph paper, postcards and stamps. Gauzy American landscapes - a red-rock desert, a rainbowed glade - are threaded with a dashed red line that tracks the snails' progress. And when the letter is delivered, the recipient isn't the only one who swoons; we see in a subtle cloud of hearts that two of our slimy couriers have fallen in love. The passion of the snails is nowhere mentioned in the text. The tale is hidden in the illustrations, a secret second story line for readers to discover on their eighth or 11th or umpteenth time through. "Doll-E 1.0" contains one, too; keep your eye on that dog. Further evidence that the best picture books are glorious mechanisms, well designed for the repeat reading young kids enjoy. The love story at the heart of BLUE RIDER (GROUNDWOOD, 32 PP., $17.99; AGES 3 TO 8), a sumptuous wordless tale written and illustrated by Geraldo Valerio, is between a young girl and a book. We find the girl living in an apartment in a cool blue city full of orderly rectangles and people bustling on the street, many lost in their headphones or screens. From the start, the use of color is so sophisticated you can almost hear it, as when the acidic blue "O" of a baby's mouth suggests a penetrating wail. On the sidewalk the girl spies a book. Back in her room, one image - a blue horse with a rainbow mane and a yellow tail, leaping over a field of marigolds under a sparkling starry sky - is so arresting it transforms the girl's vision. Suddenly her room and her city are alight with the bold colors of the horse's mane, and she's cast into a kaleidoscopic reverie: a field of bright blooms, a butterfly's wing, a dazzling abstract rectangular steed. We leave the girl beaming. An afternoon without technology - or, rather, with an old technology - has turned on a light switch in her mind. JULIA TURNER is the editor in chief of Slate.