THE MUSIC OF FOLK TALES: The Quiet Music Of Gently Falling Snow by Jackie Morris

-
Over 15 years ago, best-selling author and illustrator Jackie Morris was commissioned by  the charity Help Musicians UK to create designs for Christmas Cards. Each of the 16 images, filled with complex detail and exquisite rendering were produced at the rate of one per year. As you can imagine, these were the type of Christmas cards that you held onto, gazed at over and over again and cherished.
Based on those images, Jackie created this book, which has now been republished in a compact gift edition...

THE QUIET MUSIC OF GENTLY FALLING SNOW
author/illustrator: Jackie Morris 
Graffeg Ltd. (20 August 2020)
ISBN: 9781912654987
A lyrical collection of interconnected folk-tale type stories that have been "worked backwards" (in Jackies' own words) woven in and around the commissioned illustrations, this book is simply extraordinary.
The stories unfold intuitively, creating a landscape and journey fired by the ever-present music that establishes a path of sound and feeling. There is a flow; a continuity in the tales as the characters and their circumstances fold into and unfold out of each other. A familiar sense of iconography; those time-honoured fairy and folk tales shimmers in the back of each story, and yet there exists here something new, something unheard before. These are not just retellings/reworkings of old tales; these are newly born creatures that have been waiting for their change to emerge for eons.
As we lose ourselves in each illustration and the remarkable, intricate detail and palette, we see how the stories are indeed just sitting there, waiting for birth and interpretation. Their iconography helps us define ourselves, as all good folk tales should. And they are just so beautiful; filled with emotion and meaning; filled with subtle colour and line.
We find that the music at the centre of the book are not songs we have learned and practiced, but songs of the soul, of the heart that carry the journey along with an evocation of our own being.
Not really a "childrens' book", this is written so it speaks to everyone. While appealing to adults as a wonderful gift, I would also think it would reach out to the teen/young adult audience, as so many fairytale retellings are coming forth for this age group. But, traditionally, fairy and folk tales were not created for children, but as a guide so that, as we grow and age, we do not lose our sense of who we are and where we belong. The Quiet Music of Gently Falling Snow does that admirably...and with soul-songs to carry us along.

https://www.graffeg.com/product/the-quiet-music-of-gently-falling-snow-compact-edition/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Rights of the Reader

-
Image
The Rights of the Reader; Daniel Pennac, illustrated by Quentin Blake Summer is here and we do encourage summer reading with numerous incentives and programmes. It is important for children (of all ages) to 'keep their reading up' outside of school time. This is the time when kids develop their own taste in books and can be free to read books of their own choosing. And this is the single most important factor in young people developing a lifelong reading habit. But how do we, as the 'gatekeepers' of kids reading, encourage them properly without running the risk of thrusting pressure and our own ideas on them? Do that and you'll run the risk of pushing them away from reading, and there are already so many distractions for the young reader to contend with that can tempt them elsewhere. Published by Walker Books; 9781406300918 In 1992, French writer Daniel Pennac originally published this little gem of a book; The Rights of the Reader. I highly recommend ...
Read more

The Summer of Lily and Esme by John Quinn....25 years

-
Image
This year marks the anniversary of the publication of an extraordinary book. In 1991, Poolbeg published The Summer of Lily & Esme by John Quinn and in the 25 years since, it has never been out of print. The Summer of Lily & Esme tells a quiet story, filled with compassion, friendship, memory and heart. It is the story of Alan, an 11-year-old boy who has moved from the city into a house in the countryside; in the middle of nowhere.The house is old and extremely large and immaculate; and there is a locked, boarded over attic room that is said to be haunted by the ghost of a young boy who died tragically. Alan is not too pleased with this move and becomes even less thrilled when he discovers his closest neighbours, in fact his only neighbours, are a pair of elderly sisters, Esme and Lily, who seem to be suffering from dementia.  When Alan falls down a hill of brambles and weeds, the sisters, who believe they themselves to be children, mistake Alan for th...
Read more

Launch of Genesis by Eilis Barrett

-
Image
A week ago, I played a small part of the launch of Genesis , the much-anticipated sequel to Oasis by Eilis Barrett; this time at Charlie Byrnes Bookshop in Galway. Vinny Brown introduces Eilis Eilis is a remarkable young woman, as you might imagine since she is 18 years old and this is her second book. ( Oasis was published when she was 16.) Articulate and accomplished, it is a real privilege to know her, to hear her speak and to read her writing. Genesis author: Eilis Barrett publisher: Gill Books (8 September 2017 ISBN: 9780717174355 Genesis picks up the story of Quincy Emerson. She now finds herself a captive once again, in the maximum-security prison, the Colosseum as a security risk. Held in deplorable and brutal conditions in the prison, where anarchy rules and rival gangs wage a 'street war' of sorts, Quincy takes care to not make an enemy of either gang boss, while holding allegiance to no one but herself and her comrades on the outside. Food is scarce an...
Read more