Night of the Gargoyles Paperback - 1999

October 1, 1994 Ages 4-8. In a macabre and funny picture book, those stone gargoyles that squat all day on public buildings get free at night and come down from their shadowy corners. Bunting's words are creepy and poetic, scary because they are so physically precise. The stone creatures are "pock-marked," their tongues "green-pickled at the edges." They have unblinking, bulging eyes and their mouths gape like empty suits of armor in museum halls. Wiesner's duotone charcoal illustrations capture the huge heaviness of the stone figures and their gloomy malevolence as they bump and fly and tumble free in the dark. They are so ugly. They're like fiends that come from the graves at night. They're also very human. Wiesner's funniest scene is a double-page spread of a group of gargoyle creatures hunching and grunting together at a spitting water fountain. They could be the gossips and grousers at your local neighborhood hangout. This book is more a situation than a story, but it makes you face what you've always feared but hadn't quite seen. Even the word gargoyle makes you choke. Hazel Rochman Copyright© 1994, American Library Association. All rights reserved.
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