Award winning Oliver Jeffers’ book is wholly compelling for the importance of its message and the brilliance of how that is conveyed in words and pictures. To overcome her sadness when her grandfather dies a little girl decides to protect her heart from any further suffering by putting it in a bottle. For a time it works, but living without a heart turns out to be living only part of a life and soon the little girl needs to get it back. Luckily, there is someone who can help her. A story to return to time and time again.
Award-winning picture book star Oliver Jeffers explores themes of love and loss in this life-affirming, uplifting tale, due to be featured in a major motion picture.
Once there was a girl who was full of wonderment at how the world worked. She shared all her dreams and excitement with her father, who always had the answer to every question. That is until one day when his chair was empty, not to be filled again - how would the girl ever find meaning from her life again?
You can watch Helena Bonham Carter reading from it below:
'Oliver Jeffers' visually spare style enables him to convey huge emotions with minimum fuss, allowing readers time to respond!' - Julia Eccleshare, The Guardian
'Jeffers anatomises loss and the process of grief, with honesty and ingenuity' - The Daily Telegraph
'A profoundly moving book that will strike a deep chord with anyone of any age'- The Irish Times
'Full of wisdom and magic. A story which will equally bewitch adult and child, just like a classic children's book should' - Irish Independent
Author
About Oliver Jeffers
Oliver Jeffers has won numerous awards and delighted millions of kids and parents alike with his beautifully hand illustrated stories.
Jeffers's picture books are wonderfully accessible. They explore themes of friendship, loneliness, independence and imagination. He has written and illustrated, or "made", as he prefers to put it, five hugely successful picture books. The first three - the "boy books" - feature a small boy who sets off on a series of daunting quests. How to Catch a Star (2004), the first of them, was inspired by a Brer Rabbit story he read as a child. In Lost and Found (2005) the boy heroically rows to the south pole for the sake of an unhappy penguin, and in The Way Back Home (2007) he rescues a young Martian whose spaceship has crashed on the moon.
The Heart and the Bottle is wholly compelling for the importance of its message and the brilliance of how that is conveyed in words and pictures. This is a book to return to time and time again says Julia Eccleshare, Lovereading4kids’ editorial expert.
Jeffers was born in Australia in 1977 and brought up in Belfast. He studied visual communication at the University of Ulster, and graduated in 2001. Jeffers became passionate about making picture books when he began to understand the subtle relationship between words and pictures – ‘that was what excited me. Until I got really involved, I hadn't realised how just a few words can totally change the meaning of a picture.’ Now living in New York, he works as a painter, designer, printmaker and installation artist, but remains very busy making picture books.
Did you know?
Oliver loves plastic food, suitcase handles and Elvis, and has developed a bizarre habit of endlessly writing lists he never reads. He remains hell bent on travelling all over the world.
You can see Oliver talking about his artwork in this video:
We have a super set of Oliver Jeffers activity pages to download :
