Picture Books
The award-winning work is reissued as a Candlewick Picture Book Biography. George Frideric Handel always knew what he liked. And he was never afraid to do what he liked — whether smuggling a clavichord into the attic, sneaking off at a duke’s castle to play the organ, ordering forty-five pounds of snow to chill his wine, or writing operas that no one wanted to hear. Even in his darkest hour, when it seemed everyone and everything were against him, Handel stayed true to himself. And because he did, he has become one of the best-loved composers in the world. In this absorbing biography, M. T. Anderson’s narrative and Kevin Hawkes’s stunning art illuminate the life and legacy of a musical visionary. Back matter includes a time line, discography, author’s note, sources, and an index.
In a brilliant performance worthy of the composer, M. T. Anderson and Petra Mathers present a picture-book biography of the singular Erik Satie. Throughout his life, Erik Satie wanted to make a new kind of music, a kind of music both very young and very old, very bold and very shy, that followed no rules but its own. At first glance, Erik Satie looked as normal as anyone else in Paris one hundred years ago. Beyond his shy smile, however, was a mind like no other. When Satie sat down at the piano to compose or play music, his tunes were strange and dreamlike, his melodies topsy-turvy and discordant. Many people hated his music. Few understood it. But to Erik Satie there was sense in nonsense, and the vibrant, surreal compositions of this eccentric man-child would go on to influence many artists.
An award-winning author and illustrator present a tribute to the beauty and mystery of the ocean. It came from the sea, from the lonely sea, It came from the glittering sea. In a small Massachusetts fishing village in August of 1817, dozens of citizens claimed to have seen an enormous sea serpent swimming off the coast. Terrified at first, the people of Gloucester eventually became quite accustomed to their new neighbor. Adventure seekers came from miles around to study the serpent and aggressively hunt it down, but the creature eluded capture. The Gloucester sea serpent was then, and remains now, a complete mystery. Reviving the rhythms and tone of a traditional sea chanty, M.T. Anderson recounts this exhilarating sea adventure through the eyes of a little boy who secretly hopes for the serpent's survival. The author's captivating verse is paired with Bagram Ibatoulline's luminous paintings, created in the spirit of nineteenth-century New England maritime artists.
