Promotional Information

An exquisite picture book, telling the romantic story of a family of swans and the boy who watches over them.

About the Author

Michael Morpurgo is one of today's most popular and critically acclaimed children's writers, author of KENSUKE'S KINGDOM and THE WRECK OF THE ZANZIBAR amongst many other titles. He has won a multitude of prizes including the Children's Book Award, the Smarties Prize and the Writer's Guild Award.

Reviews

A book for the whole family to treasure, the artwork shines with a strangely luminous beauty. A truly wonderful book
*Guardian*

Moments of rage and poignancy . . . Christian Birmingham's atmospheric pictures powerfully expose the terrible beauty of the real world
*Junior Education*

Beautifully craftered . . . not a word too many, not a word out of place . . . Birmingham's dramatic images hauntingly recreate the spellbinding text. A masterpiece to be reasured by young and old alike
*Carousel*

An awe-inspiring and poignant glimpse of nature's inner workings
*Publishers Weekly*

A chokingly moving, unsentimental story of a boy's attachment to a swan
*Literary Review*

Pooling their considerable talents once again, Morpurgo and Birmingham (previously teamed for Wombat Goes Walkabout) craft a superb picture book about a boy, a special swan and the sometimes cruel realities of nature. After a female swan arrives on a lake one moonlit night, a solitary farmboy who lives nearby befriends her, watching through the seasons as she finds a mate and starts a family. An unusually long winter leaves a family of foxes near starvation, however, and in the end the boy is helpless to save his beloved swan from an attack. "I knew the precise moment she died," he observes. "I knew it because she sang it." Morpurgo's sharp observations trace the cycles of the natural world with a bittersweet beauty, never anthropomorphizing the animals yet conveying a deep respect for the ways of their world. His words take wing with Birmingham's pastels. Plying light and shadow to echo the story's shifting moods, the artist blends and blurs colors in a series of breathtaking impressionistic images and unusual perspectives (the newly arrived male greeting the boy's swan is reflected in the boy's eyes; readers see only the boy's image on the surface of the water as he spies on the newborn cygnets swimming behind their mother). An awe-inspiring and poignant glimpse of nature's inner workings. Ages 4-8. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

A book for the whole family to treasure, the artwork shines with a strangely luminous beauty. A truly wonderful book * Guardian *
Moments of rage and poignancy . . . Christian Birmingham's atmospheric pictures powerfully expose the terrible beauty of the real world * Junior Education *
Beautifully craftered . . . not a word too many, not a word out of place . . . Birmingham's dramatic images hauntingly recreate the spellbinding text. A masterpiece to be reasured by young and old alike * Carousel *
An awe-inspiring and poignant glimpse of nature's inner workings * Publishers Weekly *
A chokingly moving, unsentimental story of a boy's attachment to a swan * Literary Review *