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This is one of my favorite childrens books. I learned about it from watching the movie A Door In The Floor with Jeff Bridges...a must see :)
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A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound
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In John Irving's ninth novel A Widow for One Year, a creepy children's book author named Ted Cole writes a bedtime story about things that go bump in the night. That odd, gently comical tale is brought to life here with Tatjana Hauptmann's shadowy, moonlit pencil illustrations. Young Tom wakes up in the middle of the night to an unusual sound, but his two-year-old brother Tim does not. When his fathers asks what it sounded like, Tom reveals a number of silly and scary options: "like a monster with no arms and no legs," or "a dog trying to open a door," or "a ghost dropping stolen peanuts"--"a sound like someone trying not to make a sound," in fact. The illustrations--with a smattering of wordless spreads--show the pajama-clad Tom wandering alone through a big empty house as bulges in the wall and long shadows hint at unseen horrors. In the end, the father tells his boys that the sound is just a mouse in the wall. Tom is immensely relieved, but baby Tim screams because he doesn't know what a mouse is, and stays up all night to ward off the furry, mysterious thing. Not too scary, nor too comforting, Irving's picture-book debut imaginatively captures that late-night world where everything looks and sounds a little like a monster. (Preschool to age 6) --Karin Snelson
32 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1,2003
This edition
- Format
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32 pages, Hardcover
- Published
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January 1, 2003 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- ISBN
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9780747572930
- ASIN
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0747572933
- Language
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English
About the author
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JOHN IRVING was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published in 1968, when he was twenty-six. He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, and coached wrestling until he was forty-seven.
Mr. Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times—winning once, in 1980, for his novel The World According to Garp. He received an O. Henry Award in 1981 for his short story “Interior Space.” In 2000, Mr. Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2013, he won a Lambda Literary Award for his novel In One Person.
An international writer—his novels have been translated into more than thirty-five languages—John Irving lives in Toronto. His all-time best-selling novel, in every language, is A Prayer for Owen Meany.
Avenue of Mysteries is his fourteenth novel.
Mr. Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times—winning once, in 1980, for his novel The World According to Garp. He received an O. Henry Award in 1981 for his short story “Interior Space.” In 2000, Mr. Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2013, he won a Lambda Literary Award for his novel In One Person.
An international writer—his novels have been translated into more than thirty-five languages—John Irving lives in Toronto. His all-time best-selling novel, in every language, is A Prayer for Owen Meany.
Avenue of Mysteries is his fourteenth novel.
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Rating(4 / 5.0, 55 votes)
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55 reviews All reviews
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This book shows how a child's imagination at night can turn the house into a very scary place. It was written well and the illustrations really added to the story.
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Really wonderful! I couldn't believe when I saw this available and I'm so glad more people have been introduced to Mr. Irving from something like this. One of my all time favorite lines, too.
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I liked this one. It is a different kind of children's book, but my kid's were able to understand the joke. Recommend this one.
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I liked it because it's John Irving. Probably won't be a classic of childhood.
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such a beautiful story. the story haunted me for a long time after reading it in irving's "a widow for one year" but i'm not a fan of the illustrations in this book. i'd love to see it illustrated more along the lines of work by anders brekhus nilsen. darker, more ethereal.
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In the introduction, John Irving explains that this story started as a story one of his characters (in an adult book) tells his daughter to calm her after a nightmare. So this is an interesting story with an interesting origin but I'm not sure it would calm any child I know. The artwork looks to be a blend of watercolors and pencil. The color palette is predominantly blues, grays, and purples which give the nighttime scenes a soothing, rather than scary, feel.
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