When Comes What Darkly Thieves
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3.6 • 39 Ratings
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Publisher Description
A fairy tale, to be sure. One that you’ll wake from feeling as if someone spent all night weaving nets in which to catch your dream animals. And yet, they and your dreams escape nevertheless, because the meanings of dreams are easily frightened. Perhaps it is precisely those things that we don’t quite understand, of which we only have the faintest inkling, that continue to live and exist inside us, that persist, that transmute their precious metals into our dreams, into our dream creatures, into ourselves…
Customer Reviews
Unusual
A little unusual for a kids book, but interesting.
A book to read aloud and pictures to endlessly explore
It is about the glory of imagination, in word and pictures. There are few children's books that are as creative and and be truly re-read without boredom. A delight.
Intriguing Forever on Your Shelf Book
"When Comes What Darkly Thieves" is a handsome picture book. reminiscent of the poetry-prose of Kenneth Patchen and the illustrations of Charles Keeping. It is an insistent book in that it won't let you put it down or let you stop thinking of the layers of meaning and nuances it holds within the deceptive slimness of the picture book format.
Author and illustrator Ben Rubin has managed to write a book that is intriguing for all ages from eight to ninety-eight. The literary prose dips into poetic form with word phrases that make the reader ponder and think, "Brilliant!" The collage illustrations with deep mood, dark, and dream-like closely follow the text, marrying with it the tale of the King of Gypsies stealing moonbeams from the protagonist's eyes. It is important for children to experience the darker tones of the color spectrum.
A teacher presenting a poetry unit has such a richness of material to draw upon, asking students questions, such as "What could 'I want to be a trout.' mean?" Or, "What would you feel as a trout?" This gives young people a wonderful platform to think outside the traditional box of poetry and write their "own imaginative tales, dark or light, taking off from questions such as the one above. Parents will delight in reading aloud and discussing the book with their children. Or, how about making up one's own tales and constructing collages on a long automobile journey or holiday based on this tale? This is a must have, forever book for one's bookshelf.