Child of Glass

"Gisele's pain, articulated by double-page spreads of her wide, pale blue face shedding a multifaceted crystal tear through powerful vellum page turns, will feel acute and familiar to adolescents. Will reach both small and older readers struggling to conceal, manage, and express complicated inner worlds." —Kirkus Reviews
"Concept and form are mirrored in Beatrice Alemagna’s Child of Glass, as she uses both transparencies and traditional pages to tell the story of a fragile yet resilient girl. Alemagna’s layered and highly textured drawings create a powerful sense of fluidity between the interior and exterior worlds. To turn the pages of this book is to witness transformation in real time." The 2019 New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Books List
"A soulful meditation on how to live with our human fragility, [created] with great allegorical deftness and tenderness. … Here, the genius of the physical book steps in to magnify the sensitivity of the story with a syncopation of translucent and solid pages. Transparencies of Gisele’s face layer different mood-states. … The story resolves in a soulful reminder that there is no cure for our fragility — there is only the courage of not merely living with it but embracing it as a wellspring of the tenderness that makes life worth living." — Brain Pickings
“Alemagna’s story grapples with the dilemma of living a sensitive, authentic public life amid scrutiny and expectation, and her artwork fuses textured collage elements and dreamy, surrealist touches: birds reach to embrace Gisele with human hands, and she cries a tear like a cut diamond. Most inventive are representations of Gisele’s transparent head in leaves of translucent vellum, each page turn penetrating deeper into her mind. Though Gisele survives intact, without breaking, the ordeals she undergoes are sobering and universal.” —Publishers Weekly
“Life is hard for any child who is different—but for a child who is not only different but also transparent, enduring ridicule from others can be suffocating. ... Using an interesting mix of opaque and translucent pages, Gisele’s story is told both in words and images. Interestingly, Gisele is naked throughout the story while others around her are clothed, echoing the nakedness of her thoughts. The illustrations are created in a style of collage-abstraction, their varying colors and textures representing the world in a visually intriguing way. Though there is a moderate amount of text and some pages are devoid of words completely, the message the story sends will resonate deeply with readers of all ages. This book is a gentle introduction to the complexity of the internal human conflict of fitting in while also being true to oneself.” ―STARRED REVIEW, School Library Journal