Pepi and the Secret Names - Hardcover

Jill Paton Walsh read English at St Anne's College, Oxford, and became a writer at the age of 26. In 1994, her novel Knowledge of Angels was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Jill's many books for children include Fireweed (winner of the Whitbread Prize) and Gaffer Samson's Luck (winner of the Smarties Grand Prix). She lives in Cambridge.To vist Jill Paton Walsh's website click hereFiona French studied Art Education at Croydon College of Art and went on to work as Bridget Riley's assistant. In 1986 she won the Kate Greenaway Medal for Snow White in New York. In 1992 her first book for Frances Lincoln, Anancy and Mr Dry-Bone was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal and chosen as a Children's Book of the Year. Pepi and the Secret Names (written by Jill Paton Walsh), was one of Child Education's Best Story Books of 1994 and shortlisted for the 1995 Children's Book Award. She is renowned for her distinctively sharp and colourful illustrations.Her other books for Frances Lincoln are Paradise, Bethlehem and Canticle of the Sun; The Smallest Samurai, Glass Garden, Jamil's Clever Cat, Lord of the Animals and Pepi and the Secret Names.

Pyramids, hieroglyphics, secret names, a lowly painter and an exacting pharaoh-the elements of this elegantly illustrated story are ripe with possibilities, but they never cohere. When Pepi's father descends into Prince Dhutmose's tomb to paint the animals that will accompany the prince to the Land of the Dead, Pepi bravely provides him with live models-a lion, hawk, crocodile and cobra-for he has guessed their secret names (the point of a secret name, however, is never explained). In the text, the names are presented in hieroglyphics, thus bringing the story to a temporary halt; a code in the back of the book, though not linguistically accurate, allows readers to write English words in hieroglyphics "just for fun." Nor are similarly elaborate details fully integrated into the narrative. Greenaway Medalist French (Anancy and Mr. Dry Bone) combines crisply stylized tomb paintings with child-pleasing caricatures of animals, but the page design sometimes seems frenetic-pale, pastel designs oddly mingling with brightly colored Egyptian motifs. While the writer and the illustrator each demonstrate individual strengths, text and pictures do little to enhance each other. Ages 6-up.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.