Happiness is inside all of us.
You only have to discover it.
You only have to discover it.
Daniela's father is desperate to see his daughter smile. He offers a huge reward of a magnificent glass palace.
"So his glass-blowers set to work. They blew and pulled and pinched the molten glass into silver-spun walls with pineapple-topped turrets and winged-dragon doors."
Gift givers and performers arrive from all over the land. There are elaborate masks, magic performers, lions, opera singers, tart bakers and even sausage stringers. Nothing works. Daniela is a melancholy girl - gloomy, glum and bored. Then Angelo arrives. He has made a special piece of glass. It is a mirror. Looking at her own face she begins to laugh and as she laughs the glass palace shatters. Jane Ray has made the most spectacular page filled with smithereens of glass.
This is a scrumptious book. It has richly detailed illustrations and uses wonderful words such as shimmering, gloomier, quivered and splintered. The setting of Venice adds to the delight.
Here is the Kirkus review. I need to seek out more picture books by Dianne Hofmeyr.
I would link this book with The Quiltmakers Gift by Jeff Brumbeau, The Greatest Treasure of Charlemagne the King by Nadia Wheatley, The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup by Rosemary Sutcliff and The Most wonderful thing in the world by Vivian French. This might be a book you could link with the CBCA 2018 theme "Find your Treasure".
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