Sandcastle
April 23rd, 2020 by jules
‘It’s one hundred percent sand,’ murmured a king with a curly mustache.
‘And you can hear the ocean!’ added a queen with a fancy pearl necklace.”
(Click spread to enlarge)
I wish, with this book, that I could show you every single richly colored, detailed spread inside, but since I have only a couple of spreads today, you’ll have to promise me that you’ll try to find a copy on your own. This is something I’d highly recommend. Einat Tsarfati’s Sandcastle — originally published two years ago and translated into English by Stephanie Barrouillet — is now on shelves here (Candlewick). Or will be, that is, in early May. And it is mighty fun. Also, if you step inside these pages, you can at least temporarily visit a beach. An actual crowded beach!
A girl with bright red hair settles onto this very crowded shore, excited to build a sandcastle. She tells readers she won’t build “just any castle.” Turn the page to see she’s built a massive, remarkably detailed one; it has domes, turrets, a crocodile moat, large windows, a dining hall (that always serves ice cream), a grand ballroom, a Triathlon of Knights Tournament, and much more, and it looms large over the water. We step inside with her to see the royal visitors (pictured above). Everyone is impressed (it’s entirely made of sand, after all), though eventually all the sand starts to seriously crimp everyone’s style and ruin the fun — the royal almond strudel is full of sand, plants in the greenhouse begin to wilt, and a king can’t open his chest of treasures “because the locks were full of sand.” When everyone fusses at the girl who masterminded the entire creation, her solution is both entertaining and, well … definitive.
Did you see last year’s The Neighbors from Tsarfati? When I blogged about that last year, I wrote: “It’s up to readers to decide whether or not these fantastical residents live only in the girls’ imagination, but I say it’s more fun if we all decide they’re real.” That was a book about a seven-story apartment complex, but the same applies here. (Plus, in Sandcastle, we are given a tiny clue on the final spread, one involving a duck and a crown, that perhaps solves this question for readers.) And like that last book, this new one is one for lingering. It is crammed with delightful and delightfully bizarre little details, and it’s definitely one for reading repeatedly.
I love to see Tsarfati’s books and can’t wait to see what she does next. Here is another spread. …
SANDCASTLE. Copyright © 2020 by Einat Tsarfati. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.
