Farmer and the Clown

Marla Frazee is the recipient of a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Picture Book and a three-time Caldecott Honor winner. She has illustrated many acclaimed picture books, including All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon, Stars by Mary Lyn Ray, and Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers, as well as her own Farmer Books trilogy, A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever, and The Boss Baby, which inspired the DreamWorks Animation film. She is also the illustrator of the New York Times bestselling Clementine chapter books by Sara Pennypacker. The mother of three grown sons, she lives in Pasadena, California. Visit her at MarlaFrazee.com.

* "Frazee’s controlled palette of subdued golds, browns, and grays offers a fitting backdrop for the hard-working farmer foregrounded in this wordless tale. . . . A swiftly moving circus train on the horizon introduces color and an unexpected visitor, when a bump on the tracks ejects a young clown. Exuberance meets quiet responsibility as the whirlwind in a red one-piece, the small clown, embraces the legs of the old man. . . . This is a tender look at light and shadow, the joy and comfort in companionship, the lift that laughter provides, and the friendship possible among generations (and species). The poignant relationship calls to mind the quiet potency of scenes in Raymond Briggs’s The Snowman (Random, 1978) and Sarah Stewart’s The Gardener (Farrar, 2007). Lovely."