The Heart and the Bottle

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Oliver Jeffers writes very grown-up picture books, the kind that kids love and that can make adults cry. Okay, so he can make this adult cry - especially with The Heart and the Bottle. We witness the duo’s blissful explorations until, one day, we realize that the father is gone — the little girl finds herself facing the empty chair. Life and death are part of life; much like day and night. Without one the other is not possible; it’s like The Cause And Effect Theory of Philosophy which focusses on light-oriented thinking.

She puts her heart in a glass bottle so it can't be hurt, and grows up into a young woman who has no curiosity about the world at all. But her heart is safe. Then one day she encounters a little girl, a girl just like she had been, full of questions about the world. This book helps in that regard. The story is simple: a little girl grows up with her grandfather who frequently reads to her, goes with her to play in the snow etc. Until one day he is no longer there and she needs to find a way to deal with the loss. It's also about having had her grandfather in her life shapes her as an adult later. Jeffers tells the story of a little girl, “much like any other,” whose expansive and exuberant curiosity her father fuels by reading to her all sorts of fascinating books about the sea and the stars and the wonders of our world. Beautifully produced and profoundly moving… It made me cry, and I’m pretty sure I won’t be the only one.” The Irish Times The story is about a young girl who is curious about her world, engaged, creative, dreamy, joyful, and who has a loving bond with an older person (someone who appears to be akin to a grandparent based on the book’s illustrations). The story is also about the girl’s experience of loss when the older person is no longer there, of the emotional pain she feels, and of how she copes with that pain, of what follows.

This stylish and moving picture book from Best New Illustrator, Oliver Jeffers, explores love and loss and offers an ultimately uplifting resolution. It's the story of a little girl, "much like any other, whose head was filled with all the curiosities of the world." Her grandfather takes her to the forest, the beach, and listens to her stories and all her many questions. But then one day his armchair is empty. As parents we always strive to shield our children from getting hurt, making sure the sharp corners of the furniture around our house are safely child proofed even before they come into this world, placing our hands strategically below their bum when they start taking their first steps, running along with them when they first learn to ride their bikes, holding them tight and close when they face their first failures or just being there when they are heart-broken.

She retreats into herself and as she gets older, stops noticing the stars and the sea, which she had previously delighted in. She puts her heart away in a bottle, where it can never be hurt again.The little girl stands in front of an empty chair, the chair where the father daughter duo used to drift into the surreal and enthralling world of their books. She is holding a picture she has drawn illustrating one of her animal stories she had read with her father. The picture turns from day to night yet the chair is still empty and the girl is still waiting. Her sole companion in all her fantasy worlds is no longer there.

Look at the sketches on the inside covers of the book. Can you think of some captions / speech bubbles / thought bubbles for each of them? The Heart and the Bottle is one such story told through the eyes of a child; it tells us that as parents the greatest lesson we can teach our children is conceptualising loss and pain: from as trivial as losing a toy in school to losing someone dear to your life, because the inevitable cannot be fortified. Jeffers has also explored the subject of grief with equal subtlety and genius in a grownup project celebrating the art of bearing witness.Make a list of words / phrases that describe how the girl feels at the start of the story, when she finds the empty chair, and at the end of the story. Oliver Jeffers graduated from The University of Ulster in 2001 with First Class honours. His outstanding talent has been recognised by several high-profile awards, including the Nestlé Children’s Book Prize Gold Award. ‘Lost and Found’ animation was broadcast on Channel 4. Oliver lives and works in Brookyln, New York. • The Heart and the Bottle is an immeasurable delight from endpaper to endpaper. Complement it with other exceptional children’s books about grief— including the Japanese pop-up masterpiece Little Tree and the Norwegian gem My Father’s Arms Are a Boat— then revisit Jeffers’s equally wonderful Once Upon an Alphabet, one of the best children’s books of 2014. Oliver Jeffers makes impressive use of space in this affecting story of friendship … illustrations capture feelings of loss and loneliness through the most delicate nuances of facial expression … and body language.” Julia Eccleshare, The Guardian

So she sets out to liberate her heart from its glassy prison — but the bottle has been fortified by years of self-protection. The message of the book, despite some probably describing it as "dark", is actually uplifting - like I said, because it gives you a way to cope with the unthinkable. Our zest for being parents and thinking of what is best for our child makes us weave a cocoon around our children, a cocoon so strong and dense that even the strongest of all pain, rejection and deception will be left ineffectual. But loss is a part of life, very much like eating food or drinking water or just breathing air because death is inevitable and loss is just its shadow.Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-10-13 10:15:28 Boxid IA40257703 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier What different types of punctuation has the author used? Are there any types of punctuation that he did not use? Why?