Its language is both economical and rich, its mood a complex blend of the eerie, the sensuous (the gargoyles ``lick the stars with long, stone tongues''), the innocent (the creatures evince a childlike curiosity and a touching, very human desire for company) and the melancholic (they ``have no love of humans who have made them so''). Three of the picture books he both wrote and illustrated became instant classics when they won the prestigious Caldecott Medal: Tuesday in 1992, The Three Pigs in 2002, and Flotsam in 2007, making him only the second person in the award's long history to have won three times. Enjoyed this collaboration of two well-known authors as they step out on a limb and create a unique and eery story.

After her mother dies, 15-year-old Catherine is determined to join her father, a pirate captain, on the high seas. In this haunting black-and-white picture book, Bunting (see A Day's Work, reviewed above) and Wiesner (Tuesday) imagine the secret life of gargoyles. Fünf Sterne für ein wirklich bemerkenswert schönes Buch, welches nicht nur Kindern Freude bereitet, sondern auch erwachsenen Lesern wunderbare Zeit beim Lesen und Betrachten schenken kann.

Each page is a work of art unto itself, with blacks, whites, and grays that add immeasurably to this gothic little poem about mischievous gargoyle statues that come alive at night to frolic and play jokes on human beings. Bunting (I Have an Olive Tree; Smoky Night) crafts an ethics-centered novel that will long flicker in readers' memories. Mama Elephant advises Little Elephant to "tweak twice," by pulling on her tail, if she has any questions while they go for a walk.

The illustrations are dark and interesting but they don’t make you want to explore the text and further. The gargoyles' impish, grotesque grins-expressions just this side of malevolent-and ``empty eyes unblinking'' are not easily forgotten.Young Edward doesn't even want to entertain the possibility that his soon-to-arrive sibling could be anything other than a boy named James.