The Gift – Carol Ann Duffy

Illustrator: Rob Ryan
Barefoot Books, 2010
Price not included (British author and illustrator)
32 pages
Rating: 4
Endpapers: white lacy flower paper cuts on dark yellow background
Illustrations: hand-cut paper cuts colored by spray paint
Author is from Manchester, England and Illustrator is from London

This is a visually amazing book. Such gorgeous paper cuts!

The story is of a young girl who discovered a beautiful spot in the woods. Through the years she visited often, bringing stones, seeds, plants. She tended and cared for the spot as it grew and became even more beautiful. She brought her own children there, then her grandchildren. And when she died, she was buried there, as she had wished when she was a young girl and had first set eyes on the spot.

At the beginning of the book, when she found this special place while on a picnic with her parents, "a thought suddenly came to the girl - as urgent and vivid as a butterfly opening its orange wings -- that she wanted to be buried in this plot of land when she died."

I very much like the progression of life from birth to death. But I was troubled when she first had this revelation. From a purely personal standpoint, if my own daughter had been read this as a child it would have bothered her greatly, I think. She worried about death and dying all the time, and although this is a joyful portrayal of life from beginning to end...dying at an old age....it would have given her more opportunity to dwell on death. So before reading this to a (young) child, I'd be sure about their predisposition in this area.

Beautifully told. Gorgeously illustrated. But not for every child.