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Book of Questions

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( 241 ratings, 56 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Book of Questions presents a beautifully illustrated bilingual selection of 70 evocative questions from Pablo Neruda's original poem, inviting readers into a world where curiosity, wonder, and the mysteries of life intertwine. These lyrical, surreal, and thought-provoking questions explore nature, spirituality, history, and politics, embracing paradox and mystery while celebrating human freedom and the journey from childhood to adulthood. The enchanting illustrations by Paloma Valdivia deepen the experience, drawing readers into Chilean landscapes and the universal communion with the natural world.
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Format: Hardback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book is ideal for children and young readers who delight in poetry and imaginative inquiry, as well as for adults seeking a profound and artistic exploration of life's questions. Its bilingual format also makes it an excellent resource for language learners and multicultural families.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

Abridged and illustrated version of Libro de las Preguntas (1974) aimed at younger audiences.

Where is the center of the sea? Why do the waves never break there? A book containing unanswerable, fantastical questions, inviting us to be curious, while simultaneously embracing what we cannot know.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

A New York Times Best Children's Book of 2022

A Marginalian (fka Brain Pickings) Favourite Book of 2022

A New York Times Bestseller!

A USBBY Outstanding International Book of 2023

A 2023 Bologna Ragazzi Award Amazing Bookshelf Selection

Selected for the Academy of American Poets 2022 Featured Fall Books List for Young Readers

Starred reviews in The Horn Book, Kirkus, SLJ, and PW!

This bilingual Spanish-English edition is the first illustrated selection of questions, 70 in all, from Pablo Neruda's original poem (320 questions) The Book of Questions.

Holding the wonder and mystery of childhood and the experience and knowing that come with growing up, these questions are by turns lyrical, strange, surreal, spiritual, historical, and political. They foreground the natural world, and their curiosity transcends all logic. Because they are paradoxes and riddles that embrace the limits of our ability to know, they engage with human freedom in the deepest way, removing the burden and constraint that somehow, we are meant to have answers to every question.

Gorgeously, cosmically illustrated by Paloma Valdivia, here Neruda's questions, already visual in themselves, gain a double visuality that makes them even more palpable and resonant. So clearly rooted in Chilean landscapes as they are, the questions are revealed as a communion with nature and its mysteries.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781592703227

Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 09 June 2022

Country: United States

Imprint: Enchanted Lion Books

Illustration: This book has 6 gatefolds

Contributors:

  • Illustrated by Paloma Valdivia
  • Translated by Sara Lissa Paulson

Audience: Children

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 14.0mm

Width: 230.0mm

Height: 312.0mm

Weight: 756g

Pages: 80

About the Author

Pablo Neruda (Parral, Chile, 1904 - Santiago de Chile, Chile, 1973), whose real name was Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, is undoubtedly one of the pinnacles of world poetry of the last century. Famous from a very young age, he lived in Santiago from 1920 to 1927, years in which he wrote, among others, the collection of poems "Twenty love poems and a Song of Despair," which has perhaps gained widest popularity of all his work and marks the moment when he first achieves his full powers as a Spanish-language poet. Neruda traveled extensively and and served as Chile's ambassador to several countries, including Burma, France, and Argentina. He was a prominent political activist, member of the Communist Party, and a militant intellectual. Endowed with incomparable verbal power, he also founded a revolutionary conception of poetry. His literary career is one of the main expressive adventures of the lyric in the Spanish language. In awarding him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, the Swedish Academy described him as a poet "who brings to life the destinies and dreams of an entire continent." Neruda was also awarded the International Peace Prize.

Born in Chile in 1978, Paloma Valdivia studied design at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and studied Creative Illustration at the Eina School of Art and Design in Barcelona, Spain. Her main passion is illustrated books for children. Her book have been translated into 12 languages. As a teacher, she directs the degree program in "Illustration and Autobiographical Narrative" at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. She lives in Santiago with her family.

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