Thirteen - Remy Charlip and Jerry Joyner

Thirteen by Remy Charlip and Jerry Joyner / ISBN 9781681372303 / 32-page hardcover reprint from New York Review Children's Collection (first published in 1975)

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A book of creative metamorphosis and stunning visuals that will bend children's imaginations and appeal to all ages. "One of my own personal childhood favorites..." --Brian Selznick

Thirteen is no ordinary picture book. It is book of visual and conceptual revolutions, metamorphoses, and narratives that swallow their own tails. In thirteen illustrated stories, plus "a preview of coming attractions," nothing less than the birth of the world, its duration, death, and rebirth occurs, in thirteen arresting and evolving tableaus, involving a sinking ship, a play, a leaf and caterpillar, a card trick, swans, a worm, Cinderella, the alphabet, paper magic, pyramids, a getting-thin-and-getting-fat-again dance, the fall and rise of civilization, and a countdown. This is not a book you read from beginning to end, so much as one you enter into, are absorbed by and transformed, like the thirteen tableaus themselves.

Remy Charlip (1929–2012) was an artist, writer, choreographer, theater director, teacher, and the author of twenty-nine children’s books. He attended Cooper Union, created a style of choreography called Air Mail Dances, and was a founding member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Charlip was the recipient of three New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year citations and was awarded a six-month residency in Kyoto, Japan, from the Japan–U.S. Arts Commission. The New York Review Children’s Collection publishes Thirteen, which Charlip wrote and illustrated with Jerry Joyner.