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The Visitor by Antje Damm5/20/2023 "To make the book's spreads, German artist Damm ( Waiting for Goliath) draws the tale's characters, then places their cutout figures in a small, tidy abode with furnishings crafted of paper and board, and photographs them inside. A touching, understated story about the transformative power of friendship."- Kirkus Reviews-Journal Emil brings light and color into Elise's world, with the palette changing from grays to brilliant hues. The intriguing illustrations are photographs of a 3-D diorama of the home's interior with flat, cartoon-style cutouts of the two characters, whose skin tones are the white of the artist's paper. Emil is a friendly child interested in Elise's full bookshelves, and before long she is reading stories to him, playing hide-and-seek, and fixing him a snack, before sending him home with a hopeful 'Bye for now, Emil.' That night Elise works at making her own paper airplane, with a wordless final page showing a smiling Elise with her eyes closed, a completed sky-blue airplane on the table in front of her. One day a paper airplane floats in through an open window, followed the next day by a little boy looking for his plane. She is afraid of everything and never leaves her home. Elise is a middle-aged woman wearing a checked dress and apron, with her hair worn in tightly coiled buns on the sides of her head. "In this German import (by way of New Zealand), a lonely, fearful woman named Elise lives alone in her tiny, gray house until a sky-blue paper airplane and a boy named Emil bring changes to her life.
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