The Night Gardener
The Fan Brothers (Terry Fan & Eric Fan)
ISBN: 9781481439787
Haunting beautiful pencil-shaded textured pages and spreads of a full detailed world.
This book is just so pretty. I saw the cover and was hooked instantly, and the progression of sepia-toned drawings (with flashes of bright colors as highlights or grace notes) only served to keep me entranced and delighted until the end. It's just so pretty. The story is simple but mythic: a grim and depressing lane is changed by the mysterious development of topiary sculptures, made from all of their trees over the course of a spring and summer. The topiary begins with an owl (the cover image) outside the orphanage, slowly moves down the street, and by the time it reaches the park, our boy protagonist notices the old gardener, who kindly "needs" the boy's untrained help to complete the trees in the park. The next morning the park is transformed, the boy is hooked, and the gardener is gone, but he's left a pair of pruning shears as a gift.
Did I mention how beautiful this whole thing was? The story is so sweet that in the wrong hands it could be saccharine and nauseating, but the solemn and proud drawings keep it grounded. The flat-out gorgeous spreads and pages could overwhelm a lot of stories, but by keeping this story mythic and a little haunting, a little mysterious, it holds up because of the tone and the pacing.
A beautiful collaboration, and a brilliant first picture book for this talented duo.
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