Summer vacation is going great for a girl who has everything to herself—including Grandpa—until a gray patch arrives.
Recipient of the 2017 Montreuil Children's Book Salon Pépite D'Or Literary Award • Silver Medalist in the 2018 Society of Illustrators Original Art Exhibition • A USBBY Outstanding International Book of 2019 • A 100 Scope Notes Most Astonishingly Unconventional Children's Book of 2018
In this wordless story from artist Blexbolex, a young girl's idyllic vacation is interrupted by the appearance of an unexpected houseguest, and she learns how hard it can be to invite another in on the fun.
On vacation at her grandfather's home in the countryside, a young girl has thoroughly been enjoying her summer. All this time, she has had the garden, the kitchen, forest paths, the lake, and even Grandpa all to herself. So when her grandfather brings an elephant home to stay, she is not pleased at all. How will she react to this intrusion into what she believes to be her own personal space and time?
Nostalgic and often dreamlike, this wordless story is about interrupted solitude, learning to be together with another, and how the choices we make deeply affect our lives. With beautifully textured pages inside a hardcover with cloth spine, this is silent visual storytelling at its best!
Praise
Recipient of the 2017 Salon de Montreuil Pépite D'or Literary Award
Silver Medalist in the 2018 Society of Illustrators Original Art Exhibition
A USBBY Outstanding International Book of 2019
A 100 Scope Notes Most Astonishingly Unconventional Children's Book of 2018
“Blexbolex has cracked the code.”
—The Comics Journal, Matt Seneca
STARRED REVIEW! ? “The enigmatic visual storytelling of French artist Blexbolex's Ballad (2013) is more prominent than ever in this reality-bending wordless outing, which can be read as an extended picture book or as a graphic novel... Puzzle-loving readers will adore teasing out the book's mysteries, and many more will simply want to lose themselves in its enchanting images.”
—Publishers Weekly
STARRED REVIEW! ? “This poignant tale of lost opportunity is presented through a series of small action and reaction shots set within larger views of a tidy country house in serene woodsy surrounds, all printed in serigraphic style on rough surfaced cloth. Emotional tapestries are easy to plot, both through the interplay of rich colors and deep shadows and the characters' strong, graceful postures and gestures… Magical work, as immersive as the author's Ballad (2013) or his larger-format picture albums.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Leave it to the creator of Ballad to craft one of the most unique graphic novels I've ever laid eyes on. Vacation is a dreamlike story about a girl and her grandfather and their unexpected elephantine summer guest. Blexbolex gets inventive on just about every page—playing with the concept of panels and finding inventive ways to present the passage of time.”
—100 Scope Notes, Travis Jonker
“Lush colors and screen-print patterns radiate from the roughly textured pages of the physical book, creating an open-ended, dreamlike reading experience that is as tactile as it is visual.”
—The Horn Book
