Shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Award 2009. This is an absolutely delightful book that is sure to capture the imagination of toddlers. Jeffers’ illustrations are an absolute delight and together with the text tell an extraordinary and original story about friendship and home.
What the Kate Greenaway Award judges said:
'Jeffers somehow manages to convey a whole host of emotions and moods with his stick figures. His style is so clever with its surreal and amusing details, and there is some great variation in the spreads both in terms of illustration and colour. Lovely metallic endpapers too!'
Shining star Oliver Jeffers is back with this star spangled inter-galactic adventure tale in space! One day a boy finds an aeroplane in his cupboard. Up, up, up and away he flies, high into the sky. Whizzing past clouds, stars and planets until suddenly, he runs out of petrol! Miles from earth, the boy crashes into the moon and waits. Just as he is beginning to get cold and lonely, a friendly martian appears from the darkness, also with a broken aircraft. Together they come up with a super plan to float the boy back down to earth to collect his toolbox. Can the boy find his way back home safely and will he ever make it back up to the moon to rescue his friend?
'Jeffers has a unique writing and illustrative style. It's a wonderful picture book.' Publishing News
'My picture book of the year, a joyful exploration of the power of friendship.' Irish Independent
'Beautifully illustrated, simple warm story!little children will love to share it.' Carousel
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 :
