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About The Old Country (Unabridged)

Mordicai Gerstein’s portrayal of Philippe Petit’s high-wire walk between the towers of the World Trade Center, The Man Who Walked Between the Towers , won the 2004 Caldecott Medal and was among the most admired books of the year. Now comes a memorable new work, a novel of singular insight and imagination that transports readers to the Old Country, where “every winter was a hundred years and every spring a miracle . . . where the water was like music and the music was like water . . . where all the fairy tales come from, where there was magic–and there was war.” There, Gisella stares a moment too long into the eyes of a fox, and she and the fox exchange shape. Gisella’s quest to get her girl-body back takes her on a journey across a war-ravaged country that has lost its shape. She encounters sprites, talking animals, a chicken that lays a golden egg, a court with a spider for a judge–and bloodshed, destruction, and questions of power and justice. Finally, looking into the eyes of the fox once more, she faces a strange and startling choice about her own nature. The Old Country is at once timeless and contemporary–a tale that draws on a wealth of storytelling tradition and dramatizes the question of what it is to be human. Part adventure story, part fable; exciting, beautifully told, rich in humor and wisdom, it is the work of an artist and storyteller at the height of his powers.