The Django

Description

Winner of the prestigious 'Best Emerging Illustrator Award' from Booktrust, Levi Pinfold has created a wonderfully moving story of a young boy dogged by the attentions of his imaginary friend 'Django' who keeps getting him into trouble. Finally, the young boy has to banish his friend, but he misses him terribly. When his father gives Jean a banjo, he rediscovers the infectious enthusiasm for music that was the Django's special gift to him.

Levi Pinfold has worked as an author and illustrator since graduating from University College Falmouth. He paints with watercolour and gouache, creating imagery from imagination and memory. His debut book, The Django, won a Booktrust Early Years Award. Michael Foreman described it as, "A virtuoso display of real drawing."

Fish-eyes perspectives and generous detailing almost suck readers' gazes into Pinfold's exotic and pastoral artwork. Once in children will revel in the bouncy rhythms and nonsense woes sprinkled throughout the fun-to-read-and-hear narrative (grotsnobbler could be a new hit term for kids and adults alike). A solemn double-page image of an empty, moon-lit field followed by a quadruple-shot spread of the boy full of remorse after he orders the Django away packs an emotional wallop and proves Pinfold knows a thing or two about visual pacing. He's a fine storyteller as well, and in the end the boy gets his own banjo, leaving children to wonder if they can rustle up their own Django. An inner imp has rarely been so sweetly and savvily rendered, * Booklist *