Review by Booklist Review
On the cover of this illustrated poem, which Lanagan dedicates to ""war children everywhere,"" a cutout doorway opens onto a bleak stretch of hills, a faint light on the horizon. ""In times of drought and wind, in times of noise, / and stress and argument,"" opens the narration, ""in times of ill feeling / and in times of fear / from the bright bare ugly difficult / sweating sun-hot world I go / to Tintinnabula."" Cai's full-bleed illustrations make staggering use of color. In the first oversize pages, a child runs through a jagged, violent landscape swathed in red, chased by a wind filled with bestial creatures. Gradually, that wind fades to a silver breeze and a white bird, and the red gives way to a gentle green as she reaches her destination (where ""silver rains / fall constant but not cold, / but cool and cooling only, calming""). Image-driven and deeply emotional, this is a lyrical book about a difficult topic that will speak to adults as much as it does to children.--Maggie Reagan Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Meditative prose by Lanagan (The Brides of Rollrock Island) offers a vision of refuge for those escaping trouble, imagining first what might drive someone to seek the sanctuary of Tintinnabula: "In times of drought and wind, in times of noise,/ and stress and argument." Cai (And the Ocean Was Our Sky) paints a small, fragile-looking figure bathed in menacing red light as two huge black beasts bear down on it. As the pages turn, the shrouded figure evades the creatures and sets off through gray, spiky mountains as "Silver rains/ fall constant but not cold." In spreads hatched with delicate lines that sway and swell, the sky is gray, the trees are bare, and the light becomes clear and silvery. A girl walks in the foreground; a white bird flies before her. The narrator voices relief ("There, I am not too big, too small for anything") and meets, at last, a twin, "My own self who rings and waits and sings." Dedicated to "war children everywhere," Lanagan's story holds out the hope that those who have experienced trauma will find peace and solitude, and that they may discover themselves again. Cai's Gothic-tinged artwork does not hold out a vision of paradise but offers images of spare beauty. Ages 5-7. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Open-ended text and illustrations allow for infinite readings while maintaining deep feeling in Lanagan's (The Brides of Rollrock Island, 2012, etc.) debut picture book.The door-shaped cutout in the front cover leads readers directly into landscape-patterned endpapers and frontmatter, while the extra-large trim size heightens the intensity of Cai's initial illustrations, which are dominated by dark red skies, gigantic, black, four-legged creatures that chase a small human figure, and jagged-edged architectural debris. These dramatic scenes slowly give way to lighter, softer-hued, sprawling landscapes accented with white as the pale-skinned narrator describes her own personal haven called Tintinnabula. There, she says, "soft rains fall and silver, / soft bells ring and sweetly, / distantly, melancholically." The narrator's movement from "times of drought and wind / and stress and argument, / / andtimes of fear" to "green, breathing, grassy hills" reaches a transitional moment in a spread in which the jagged, ruined stonework and four-legged creatures appear distant, fading into negative space as a sequence of vignettes offers glimpses of the narrator's progress toward a lush green land filled with treesand fewer man-made structures. Readers will be left wondering: Does she physically travel, or is this an internal, emotional journey? Whatand whereis she traveling away from? Can, or will, others join her?A moving portrayal of resilience that pairs exquisite free verse with evocative, richly textured drawings. (Picture book. 6-12) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
