Leaving the Nest

Mordicai Gerstein

Frances Foster Books

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What do a baby blue jay, a kitten, a girl, and a baby squirrel have in common?
They are emphatically curious about the world.
They find it difficult to leave the place where they feel safest.
And, eventually, they must all spread their wings and fly.
With his ever-inventive art, Caldecott winner Mordicai Gerstein stretches the boundaries of the traditional picture book, here using speech balloons to show all the characters talking at the same time and energetic pen-and-watercolor illustrations in this celebration of growing up.
 
Leaving the Nest is a 2008 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

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Reviews

Praise for Leaving the Nest

"A gentle and deceptively simple story."  --Starred, The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
 
“Gerstein’s realistic illustrations set the backyard stage and choreograph the frenzied acts of the drama, adding touches of humor without diminishing the tension. Good for listeners and beginning readers alike.”—Booklist
 
"Teeming with hilarious mishap and activity . . . Guaranteed to pump self-confidence in wee ones about to leave the nest."  --Kirkus Reviews
 
“[A] cherry ode to adventurousness. Exhilarating.”  --The Horn Book
 
“Heartening as well as thematically and artistically assured.” — School Library Journal, April 2007

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About the Author

Mordicai Gerstein

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 children’s 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. “I’m still surprised to be an author,” he says. “I wonder what I’ll write next?” Gerstein lives in Westhampton, Massachusetts.

Mordicai Gerstein

Mordicai Gerstein

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Leaving the Nest
Mordicai Gerstein
Award

Parents Magazine, Best Children's Books of the Year, Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, CCBC Choice (Univ. of WI)

Hardcover

Hardcover
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Frances Foster Books
February 2007
Hardcover
ISBN: 9780374343699
ISBN10: 0374343691
Picture Book
7 1/2 x 11 inches, 40 pages, Full-color pictures throughout
Age Range: 3 to 6
Grade Range: p to 1
$16.00
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Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

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