Synopses & Reviews
A lively twist on the immigrant storyWhen John Bardsley leaves England to seek his fortune in America, he finds that his new city, Philadelphia, is crawling with inchworms! No one seems to know how to get rid of them, and the American birds turn up their beaks at the thought of eating any. Recalling his rescue of a very hungry baby sparrow when he was a boy, John comes up with a novel way to solve the problem, and he once again sets sail across the ocean in order to save his new city - with some help from his feathered friends.
Using detailed illustrations, Mordicai Gerstein tells the little-known story of how sparrows came to America and how John Bardsley came to be known as Sparrow Jack. Sparrow Jack is a 2004 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
Review
"...pleasing blend of history and legend...Gerstein's whimsical illustrations capture the spirited energy of this intriguing story...[Sparrow Jack] is portrayed as a determined, ingenious, and endearing figure...the fact-based story includes pleasing touches of imagination...An enjoyable and unusual bit of history" --
School Library Journal
About the Author
Mordicai Gerstein is the author and illustrator of The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, winner of the Caldecott Medal, and has had four books named New York Times Best Illustrated Books of the Year. Gerstein was born in Los Angeles in 1935. He remembers being inspired as a child by images of fine art, which his mother cut out of Life magazine, and by childrens books from the library: “I looked at Rembrandt and Superman, Matisse and Bugs Bunny, and began to make my own pictures.” He attended Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, and then got a job in an animated cartoon studio that sent him to New York, where he designed characters and thought up ideas for TV commercials. When a writer named Elizabeth Levy asked him to illustrate a humorous mystery story about two girls and a dog, his book career began, and soon he moved on to writing as well as illustrating. “Im still surprised to be an author,” he says. “I wonder what Ill write next?” Gerstein lives in Westhampton, Massachusetts.