Postcards

Paul Fleischman and Julie Paschkis. Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal: A Worldwide Cinderella. New York: Henry Holt 2007 32pp ISBN-13: 9780805079531 ISBN-10: 080507953X (picturebook, 5–9)

Acclaimed author Paul Fleischman continues to demonstrate his versatility as he cleverly weaves various versions of the Cinderella story into a singular, satisfying, globe-spanning retelling. A world map on the endpapers in rich gold and blue marks the seventeen cultures represented in this inspired creation. When the girl has nothing to wear to the ball, a crocodile swims up with a sarong of gold in its mouth (Indonesia). A cloak sewn of kingfisher feathers appears (China) and a kimono as red as sunset (Japan). During the crucial test, a rooster warns that the 'beauty is hid below' (Iraq). The straw sandal (Korea) fits and the wedding feast follows: mangoes and melons (Zimbabwe), rice seasoned with almonds (India), beef stew and lamb stew (Ireland).

Using Winsor and Newton gouaches, the artist draws, to brilliant effect, on each country's folk art and textile patterns to create a varied yet unified work of extraordinary beauty. Words and pictures perfectly blend in this remarkable example of creativity and inventiveness.

Ishmael Beah. A Long Way Gone. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2007 240pp ISBN-13: 9780374105235; ISBN-10: 0374105235 (memoir, 12+)

Sebastian Junger, author of THE PERFECT STORM, writes on the book's jacket: 'A LONG WAY GONE is one of the most important war stories of our generation …. Ishmael Beah … has become one of its most eloquent chroniclers.' The war Beah describes takes place in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. His entire family murdered by rebels, Beah, 12, wanders from village to village with other orphaned boys. Soldiers fighting the rebels recruit the children and, with the help of narcotics, train them to be killers. Beah tells his riveting story graphically, sparing the reader nothing of his nightmare life as a soldier. Without the knowledge that against all odds Beah survived to be rehabilitated, readers might not have the fortitude to face the brutal honesty of this account. At 15, a drug addict, he was discharged from the army to a UNICEF camp. For a time he thought he would never again live normally. Helped by a caring nurse and a loving uncle he didn't know existed, Ishmael lives to tell his harrowing tale. He moved to the United States, completed high school at the UN's International School and graduated from Oberlin College in 2004.

Gusti. Half Of An Elephant. Mexico City: Ediciones Serres City 2004 First US edition La Jolla, CA: Kane/Miller 2006 32pp ISBN-10: 193360509X; ISBN-13: 9781933605098 (picturebook, 4–8)

My idea,' says Gusti, author and illustrator, 'is to show children that creativity helps us to live a better life.' His unique and witty book teaches this lesson by example. One night, the world splits in two and an elephant, himself depicted here as a creature of bits and pieces of wood with a paintbrush for a tail and a long spring for a trunk, loses his back half. He begins a journey to find the missing part, discovering, as he searches, the pros and cons of being without his other half and learning that there are many different ways of rebuilding and reinventing oneself.

Gusti, an award-winning illustrator from Buenos Aires, Argentina, cleverly uses digital images of discarded objects such as washers, screws, bits of wood, nuts and bolts 'to show children that art can be created from objects that usually end up in the garbage can'. Young listeners or readers will delight in this imaginative book, poring over pages packed with visual surprises and pondering messages communicated...