The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: A Classic Collectible Pop-Up by Stephen King (Based On Work by), Alan Dingman (Illustrator), Peter Abrahams, Kees Moerbeek

From Barnes & Noble

Stephen King's 1999 The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon was destined to be a pop-up. Who can deny the graphic possibilities of a Stephen King story about a nine-year-old girl who wanders off the path and becomes lost in a menacing forest? Alan Dingman's illustrations and pop-ups add new dimensions to Trisha McFarland's Dantesque adventure.

From the Publisher

A modern-day Hansel & Gretel from the master of suspense -- now in pop-up edition.

Nine-year-old Trisha McFarland is lost in the wilderness of the Applachian Trail after wandering off from her mother and brother. For solace she tunes her Walkman radio to Boston Red Sox broadcasts and the gritty performances of her hero, relief pitcher Tom Gordon. As she gets more and more lost, and as the days and nights pass, she imagines that Tom Gordon is with her -- her savior to surviving an enemy known only by the slaughtered animals and mangled trees in its wake. It is a fairy tale grimmer than Grimm, but aglow with a girl's indomitable spirit and told in stunning three-dimension.

The novel version of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon was a nominee for the Washington State Evergreen Young Adult Book Award, a 2000 YALSA Best Book for Young Adults, and a 1999 nominee for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement.

Stephen King's first pop-up is sure to captivate his fans of all ages.

The Washington Post - Bill Sheenhan

Alan Dingman has faithfully illustrated the story, while the text, shrewdly adapted for this stringent format by Peter Abrahams, retains the bite and flavor of the original. All in all, this latest incarnation of a minor King gem offers numerous pleasures and some genuinely creepy moments. It would make an ideal gift for the serious King fan and for the adventurous young reader with a taste for stories that have real -- and very sharp -- teeth.

Publishers Weekly

Chilling things pop up in this book by King, who revises his harrowing 1999 novel about a nine-year-old lost in the Maine woods. Due to the format's limited space, the exposition is condensed and rushed: Trisha, the title girl, is on a hike with her recently divorced mom and sullen brother, Pete. While her mother and brother argue, Trisha steps off the trail to relieve herself, and loses her bearings. Beset by bloodthirsty insects (represented on a transparent plastic screen that spins around her face) and menaced by a nameless "special thing that comes for lost kids," Trisha struggles to stay sane and alive. She takes comfort in hallucinations of her hero, Red Sox closing pitcher Tom Gordon, who offers fatherly advice. Like the original, this version follows a baseball structure, from a calm "first inning" to an alarming "top of the ninth" where Trisha faces the supernatural "God of the Lost," a bearlike monster with spiny teeth. King mentions (but the illustrations do not show) things like "the severed head of a deer, terrified eyes wide open" from the original; Dingman creates seven spreads, heavy on the nauseous green and shadowy brown, as Trisha grows increasingly haggard and startling things emerge from trapdoor pages (e.g., a hideous wolfish head or clawed paw appears, then swoops behind a bush). Where the novel built malicious suspense, this production demands that readers lift flaps and peek through transparent windows to heighten the horror. Daring and, ideally, mature King fans will appreciate this scary, perversely funny combo of horror and children's pop-up. Ages 8-up. (Oct.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Eleanor Heldrich - Children's Literature

This is a masterful movable book with paper engineering by Kees Moerbeck. The book, which is eight inches high, ten and a half inches wide and two inches thick, the terrifying story of a young girl lost in the Maine woods in pop-ups. Each of the seven double-page spreads has a large pop-up in the center with two side pullouts that contain a condensed text version of the original book and additional animated art to move the story forward. In the story, the children of separated parents go back and forth between their mom and dad. On the day the adventure begins, in spite of the children's reluctance, Trisha, her mother and brother go for an afternoon hike in the Maine woods. When a quarrel begins between her mother and brother, Trisha drops behind for a moment; and, suddenly, she is lost in the forest. For the next week she struggles seeking a way out the woods while having to find shelter at night and things to eat and drink. What gets her through the hunger, pain and terror is thinking about the professional baseball games that she and her father enjoy together. Their favorite player is Tom Gordon, a closing pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, and she often fantasizes that she talks to him. It is her own indomitable courage and this imaginary relationship with Tom Gordon—knowing what he would do in her situation and how brave he would be—that brings her through a dangerous and fearful experience. 2004, Little Simon, Ages 8 up.

School Library Journal

Gr 4-6-King boils down his 1999 novel of the same name to short-story length for this elaborately engineered pop-up version. The plot and nightmarish atmosphere remain broadly the same; nine-year-old Trisha takes a wrong turn in the Maine woods, and only gets through an increasingly grueling week of being scared, hungry, attacked by insects, and afflicted with hallucinations by listening to the exploits of (now ex-) Red Sox closer Tom Gordon on her Walkman. The text is printed on accordion-folded side flaps, flanking large-scale outdoor scenes enhanced by the occasional pull tab or acetate window; moving parts are few but deliciously scary-particularly one flap that flips open to reveal a face made of swarming wasps, and another that reveals a preternaturally toothy bear. Despite a happy ending, and a design sturdy enough to endure repeated readings, this is definitely not for younger "scary story" seekers.-John Peters, New York Public Library Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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