The Three Golden Keys
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List Price:
$23.00
Czech Hotels Travel Price:
$15.64
Your Savings: $ 7.36 ( 32% )
Subject To Change Without Notice
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9780374375256
ISBN: 0374375259
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 64
Publication Date: 2001-10-03
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Reading Level: Ages 4-8
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
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Editorial Reviews:
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World-renowned artist brings the magic of Prague and its legends to life
In this allegorical tale, a man in a hot-air ballon is thrown off course in a violent storm, landing him in the city of his youth. He finds the way to his old home, but the house is dark, with three rusty padlocks on the door. A black cat with eyes of fire appears and leads him through Prague's silent streets and monuments in seach of the three golden keys that will open the door of his boyhood home and restore the city to life. In this reissue of one of his most personal works, Peter Sís recaptures the wonder of his own lost childhood in Prague and celebrates the city's wonderful cultural heritage, reborn after forty-five years of Communist rule. He wrote it for his young daughter, Madeleine, who is growing up in the New World, so that when she is old enough to understand it she will have a record of the strange and wonderful heritage that is her birthright. An utterly magical book on every level.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Lovely Prague!
Comment: Having travelled a couple of times to Prague and wandered its streets I found it lovely to revisit some of those sites in this wonderful quirky book. I can happily recommend it for both adults and children. Peter Sis is an illustrator extraordinaire!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Truly Unique
Comment: The book is beautiful - both copy and illustration. My son's grandfather is from Prague, so I bought this book for him to read to my son. I was delighted to find it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Three Golden Keys
Comment: Both my 6-year-old daughter and I love this book so much. Beautiful illustration as the other works of Peter sis, with a facinating story.
Customer Rating:
Summary: this book opened new doors to children's literature for my family
Comment: I bought this book for my daughter when she was only three. Yes, way too young in some ways, but it immediately became her favorite book because it can be read on so many levels and the pictures carried her imagination to new places. It's the story of a man who somehow magically goes back in time to his home in Prague when he was a child. This introduced a sense of history, of other places defined by their unique history, even a sense of old Europe, to my daughter. You can read the book on many levels because it has small, detailed stored written in boxes and these can be saved for when a child gets older. It's really a magical book for any age. We've gone on to be Peter Sis fans and enjoy all of his stories. Some of them are little masterpieces.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Peter Sis takes a magical visit back to Prague, the city of his childhood
Comment: Peter Sis, who has written and illustrated the Caldecott Honor books "Tibet Through the Red Box" and "Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei," wrote "The Three Golden Keys" for his daughter, Madeline. The book begins with a handwritten letter to Madeline, explaining that while she was born in New York, in the New World, he wants to share with her the mystery of Prague, the city in which he was raised. So he spins the story of how his hot-air balloon was blown off course in a violent storm and landed in the Prague of his childhood. There he finds his wa yto his old home, only to find the house dark and three rusty padlocks on the door. He knows that he must find the keys to unlock the locks to get inside. Fortunately his old black cat shows up and as the man follows her through the winter streets of his childhood, they are filled with memories.
Three times in this story, as the seasons change, the man comes to a special place from his childhood, and in each place an old Czech legend is revealed to the man and his cat. The first is the legend of the night Bruncvik, the second the story of the Golem, and the third the story of Mast Hanus and his astronomical clock. Attached to each legend is a golden key, and once the man has collected them the city comes alive and he goes to open the door to his house and see what magical things await him there. Just be forewarned that when you kids read this book that they might be disappointed that their parents were not born in a distant land (fortunately I am safe on that score, although I have never been back to the city of my birth, but I would like to go, although by something other than a hot-air balloon).
The cover illustration for "The Three Golden Keys" does not give you any real indication of the visual delights inside. My only real issue with this book is that the three legends are each told in a single double-page spread, with twenty-four illustrations (approximately one-inch by one-and-a-half-inches each) surrounding the text section, which has captions for each (unnumbered) drawing after an introduction, surrounding a giant drawing of a key. Given that the rest of the book consists of full-page or double-page illustrations rich in detail and full of color, the little comic strip versions of the legends suffer a bit in comparison, although they are as finely detailed as the rest of the art work. Besides, it would not bother me if this book was two or three times longer to work everything in because you are not going to get tired of Sis's artwork.
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