Glasswings: A Butterfly's Story - Elisa Kleven

Illustrated by the author

Dial Books for Young Readers (Penguin), 2013

HC $16.99

32 pages

Goodreads rating: 5.00 (But there are only three ratings to average so far- and mine's one of them)

My rating: 5

Endpapers: lime green with various sized outlines of Glasswing butterflies in white

"Claire was a Glasswing butterfly.

Her wings, as clear as windows,

let the world shine through."

But a huge wind sweeps her away from her family in the country to a street in the city, where there aren't many flowers from which she can sip nectar,  A friendly pigeon and ladybug show her a tiny community garden, but the flowers are sparse.  She sips and flits from flower to flower, day after day, and the garden blooms and flourishes with her help.

There's a prologue that tells a little about Glasswings (they inhabit Central and South America).  I wonder why it wasn't put at the end of the story?

I'm an Elisa Kleven fan, so perhaps I'm biased, but I love her work - her collaged illustrations are wonderful. On one page, the hillside of tall city buildings is created from cut rectangles from the insides of business envelopes and water colors. Mmmmm. The windows of the dull gray buildings are alive with colorful life - curtains, people, quilt-y shades and brightly colored clothing. I could just look and look and look. And, there's a happy, satisfying ending to a relatively simple, thoughtful story that also contains a message - and lesson - or two.

The Weaver - Thacher Hurd

Illustrated by Elisa Kleven
Farrar Straus Giroux, 2010
$16.99
32 pages
Rating: 5
Endpapers: Midnight blue

This is a lovely, gentle, very special book. Although the words and illustrations are rendered by two different people, they work beautifully...oh so beautifully...together.

A weaver sits above the earth, watching and weaving. She uses parts of the universe as the threads on her loom, she dyes them the colors of the morning. She weaves in friendship and family, happiness and sadness, anger and love. And as night approaches, her masterpiece complete, she spreads it across the sky and lets it gently fall and settle across the world - warming us, comforting us, and holding our memories.

"Looking down on the world,
the weaver sees
a smile on someone's face,
a hug between friends,
babies crying and then held warm
in their parents arms."

I've been an Elisa Kleven fan for a long time. I can remember reading and sharing Snowsong Whistling to my very first college class at COA. A few years ago at the Reading the World Conference at the University of San Francisco I participated in a workshop run by Elisa Kleven. I've read Ernst and Wish, Abuela and City by the Bay over and over and over. I wish the pages in her books were bigger so that I could closely examine every minute detail.

Poetry. Sheer poetry. Words and pictures alike. Every page is beautiful. This is the perfect gift for a newborn or toddler.

Thacher Hurd's website.
Elisa Kleven's website.

Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast: interviews the author and illustrator.

Wish - Roseanne Thong

Illustrator: Elisa Kleven ! !
For: Kids of all ages, families
Published: 2008
Rating: VERY cool....yup....5
Read: Oct. 3, 2008
Endpapers: World map with the fifteen locations and tiny drawings for each

Fifteen countries are depicted, first with a quatrain, followed by information about the "wishful" tradition that is being highlighted.

Guatemala, Japan, Iran (Persia), Russia, South Africa, Ireland, India, Brazil, Italy, China, Australia, Israel, Mexico, Thailand, and America's birthday candles.

Racing swiftly throught the graves
we launch our giant kites,
so they will carry wishes
as they soar to heaven's heights. (Guatemala)

In Jerusalem's old quarter,
family members big and small
place wishes into ancient cracks
along the Western Wall. (Israel)

There are lucky symbols hiding in the pictures. And the pictures -- well, I LOVE Elisa Kleven's illustrations, and these don't disappoint. Collagy and busy and softly covering the entire page except for the 4 x 4 white, quilt-framed text on each double page spread. The quatrain is done in a hard-to-read cursive font - it needs to be bolder or bigger of a different font. The explanation font that used following the quatrian words fine...

Families can use some of these with their own kids. It'd make a nice gift for the right family. Think I'll give it to Laura...