Free Graven Images by Paul Fleischman

comedy with tragedy was unusual. I was lucky in having Charlotte Zolotow as my editor — a believer in letting her authors’ talents unfold according to their own laws rather than the market’s dictates. When it was named a Newbery Honor Book, her vision was confirmed. At the time, she was considering an even stranger manuscript of mine — a book of poems about birds scored for two voices. She decided to take it, and a few years later published its sequel,
Joyful Noise,
which won the Newbery Medal. Some books open a door for the author onto another book.
Graven Images
opened onto the rest of my career.
    This book holds a special place on my secret shelf for another reason. Though it was my third book published, it was the sixth I wrote, not counting the sealing book and others never finished. Every author is a melting pot of earlier authors, and for years I’d been reaching for this particular sound and style — a mix of Greek myths and Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and Dylan Thomas, and many others. Finally, in this book, I’d grasped it. I can still recall that private jubilation. It’s a feeling no one else can give you, and no one can take away.
    A third prediction: Some of you will know that feeling. Just typing those words, I find myself smiling for you.

P AUL F LEISCHMAN received a Newbery Honor for
Graven Images,
then went on to win the Newbery Medal for
Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices
. Since then, he has crafted an ever more innovative library of books, including
Zap,
a play for high-school students that intertwines seven plays in one, and
Dateline: Troy,
which juxtaposes an absorbing account of the Trojan War with newspaper clippings of modern events from the First World War to the War on Terror. He is also the author of several picture books, including
Weslandia,
illustrated by Kevin Hawkes;
The Birthday Tree
, illustrated by Barry Root;
The Dunderheads
and
The Dunderheads Behind Bars
, illustrated by David Roberts; and
The Animal Hedge
and
The Matchbox Diary
, both illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. Paul Fleischman lives in Aromas, California.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either
products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
    Text copyright © 1982 by Paul Fleischman
Afterword copyright © 2006 by Paul Fleischman
Illustrations copyright © 2006 by Bagram Ibatoulline
    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
    First Candlewick Press electronic edition 2014
First published in 1982 by Harper & Row
    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fleischman, Paul.
Graven images : three stories / by Paul Fleischman;
illustrations by Bagram Ibatoulline.
p.  cm.
Summary: A collection of three stories about a child who reads the lips of those who whisper secrets into a statue’s ear; a daydreaming shoemaker’s apprentice who must find ways to make the girl he loves notice him; and a stone carver who creates a statue of a ghost.
ISBN 978-0-7636-2775-1 (hardcover)
1. Children’s stories, American. [1. Statues — Fiction.
2. Supernatural — Fiction.] I. Ibatoulline, Bagram, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.F59918Gr 2006
[Fic] — dc22  2005054283
    ISBN 978-0-7636-2984-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-7636-7427-4 (electronic)
    The illustrations were done in acryl gouache.
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