Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
There are some stories so terrible that we wish they would never be told. More than that, we wish for the events that unfold within these stories never to have happened in the first place, because it is their very reality that means the stories are not just terrible--they're true. In The Book of Denial, a child stumbles upon the story that his father has been writing in secret, and it's full of the worst imaginable darkness. Why is his father writing such a story? He is writing it, we learn, because he lives it, because he is part of the horror that must be told and become known: the history of the theft of childhood, safety, care, and life itself from children. He says that he must write it so that others care, but what toll will this act of storytelling take on him, and on those around him?
Written by genre-defying Mexican author Ricardo Ch vez, The Book of Denial is a dark and powerful story within a story, illustrated with a striking graphic sensibility by Alejandro Magellanes and translated by Lawrence Schimel.
Synopsis
Told with striking, unconventional graphic design, a chilling story of a child who discovers his father's secret book about violence against children, which gives a larger historical frame to the kind of abuse he himself has suffered.
There are some stories so terrible that we wish they would never be told. More than
that, we wish for the events that unfold within these stories never to have happened in
the first place, because it is their very reality that means the stories are not just
terrible--they're true. In The Book of Denial, a child stumbles upon the
story that his father has been writing in secret, and it's full of the worst imaginable
darkness. Why is his father writing such a story? He is writing it, we learn, because he lives it,
because he is part of the horror that must be told and become known: the history of the theft of
childhood, safety, care, and life itself from children. He says that he must write it so that others care, but
what toll will this act of storytelling take on him, and on those around him?
Written by genre-defying Mexican author Ricardo Ch vez Casta eda,
The Book of Denial is a dark and powerful story within a story,
illustrated with a striking graphic sensibility by Alejandro Magallanes and
translated by Lawrence Schimel.
This is the third book to appear under Unruly, an imprint of picture books for older readers, and will include a short note to readers about how it continues to build this experimental framework of visually complex, sophisticated picture books for teens and adults.
Synopsis
The uncommon and exceptional design of this book and its richly expressive illustrations combine with an elegantly phrased text and poignant narration to tell a horrific yet moving story that returns us to a lost history and reminds us that the worst terror of the human being is ourselves."How can you see letters without wanting to read them? How can you look at the sea without wanting to swim in it?"
A boy (no more than nine) discovers that his father is writing a history of infanticide. Curiosity compels the boy, and so the sea in which he begins to swim is that of his father's sloping handwriting.
Every night, the boy goes through a fragment of those pages--pages that make him feel suffocated and unable to sleep--while every day he asks himself if children should know this horror story. But the boy's most pressing concern is something else: that history is catching-up with him and the other children, as his father's book progresses through the ages. Will the story reach the present day and find him?
This book has many intentions, one of them being to ask why adults know so little about the moments in history where infants were exterminated, such as the time of the Roman Emperor Nero, the crusades against children, the massacre of the Holy Innocents, the Congress of Basel in 1437, Napoleon and the regiments of Marie Louise... right up to the child trafficking and domestic violence of today. Ch vez Casta eda and Magallanes focus here so that others will care, and so that this history will resurface for transmission and remembrance. They also tell the story as a commentary on our own times, as a way of provoking us to think more honestly and deeply about childhood, children, and what we owe them.
A visually stunning horror story, ghost story, and work of graphic literary fiction, this book tells a raw and disturbing story rooted in our human history, with a devastating and unforgettable ending.
Written by genre-defying Mexican author Ricardo Ch vez Casta eda,
The Book of Denial is a dark and powerful story within a story, illustrated with a striking graphic sensibility by Alejandro Magallanes and translated by Lawrence Schimel.
This is the third book to appear under Unruly, an imprint of picture books for older readers, and will include a short note to readers about how it continues to build this experimental framework of visually complex, sophisticated picture books for teens and adults.
Synopsis
A visually stunning horror story, ghost story, and work of graphic literary fiction, this book tells a raw and disturbing story rooted in our human history, with a devastating and unforgettable ending.
"How can you see letters without wanting to read them? How can you look at the sea without wanting to swim in it?"
A boy (no more than nine) discovers that his father is writing a history of infanticide. Curiosity compels the boy, and so the sea in which he begins to swim is that of his father's sloping handwriting.
Every night, the boy goes through a fragment of those pages--pages that make him feel suffocated and unable to sleep--while every day he asks himself if children should know this horror story. But the boy's most pressing concern is something else: that history is catching-up with him and the other children, as his father's book progresses through the ages. Will the story reach the present day and find him?
This book has many intentions, one of them being to ask why adults know so little about the moments in history where infants were exterminated, such as the time of the Roman Emperor Nero, the crusades against children, the massacre of the Holy Innocents, the Congress of Basel in 1437, Napoleon and the regiments of Marie Louise... right up to the child trafficking and domestic violence of today. Ch vez Casta eda and Magallanes focus here so that others will care, and so that this history will resurface for transmission and remembrance. They also tell the story as a commentary on our own times, as a way of provoking us to think more honestly and deeply about childhood, children, and the respect we owe them in their difference from adults.
Written by genre-defying Mexican author Ricardo Ch vez Casta eda, The Book of Denial is a dark and powerful story within a story, illustrated with a striking graphic sensibility by Alejandro Magallanes and translated by Lawrence Schimel.
This is the third book to appear under Unruly, an imprint of picture books for older readers, and will include a short note to readers about how it continues to build this experimental framework of visually complex, sophisticated picture books for teens and adults.
Synopsis
From award-winning Mexican author Ricardo Ch vez Casta eda and the visionary Mexican designer Alejandro Magallanes comes a horror story and ghost story that is both daringly and beautifully told in word and image.
There are stories so terrible that we tremble to hear even a whisper of them. Even more terrible, some of them are true.This is one such story, a story of our deepest inhumanity--one that confronts the history of violence against children, and through its young narrator attempts to find a way out. A horror story and ghost story told as much through art as through text,
The Book of Denial is an antidote to our collective silence. By uplifting storytelling as a means of understanding the past and shaping the future, it is also--improbably--a beacon of hope.
Written by genre-defying Mexican author Ricardo Ch vez Casta eda, The Book of Denial is a dark and powerful story within a story, illustrated with a striking graphic sensibility by Alejandro Magallanes and translated by Lawrence Schimel.
This is the third book to appear under Unruly, an imprint of picture books for older readers, and will include a short note to readers about how it continues to build this experimental framework of visually complex, sophisticated picture books for teens and adults.