{"product_id":"the-child-and-the-river-isbn-9781681377421","title":"The Child and the River","description":"\u003cb\u003eA new translation of an evocative, \u003ci\u003eHuckleberry Finn\u003c\/i\u003e–esque French bestseller about a young farmboy, the river where he is forbidden to play, and the adventures that ensue when he disobeys his family’s wishes.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Child and the River\u003c\/i\u003e tells a simple but haunting tale.  Pascalet, a boy growing up on a farm in the south of France, is  permitted by his parents to play wherever he likes—only never by the  river. Prohibition turns into temptation: Pascalet dreams of nothing so  much as heading down to the river, and one day, with his parents away,  he does. Wandering along the bank, intoxicated with newfound freedom, he  falls asleep in a rowboat and wakes to find himself caught in rapids  and run aground on an island where a band of Gypsies has pitched camp  together with their trained bear. Hiding in the underbrush, Pascalet  observes that the group includes a boy his age, who, after receiving a  whipping, has been left tied to a post. This is Gatzo, and as soon as  night falls, Pascalet sets him loose. The boys escape in a boat and  spend an idyllic week on the river. But then the mysterious “puppeteer  of souls” arrives, bringing their adventure to an end, and Pascalet must  go back home to face the music. Has he seen the last of his new friend?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLong hailed as a sort of French \u003ci\u003eHuckleberry Finn\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Child and the River\u003c\/i\u003e is, as Henri Bosco himself once wrote in a letter to a friend, “a novel  very good, I think, for children, adolescents, and poets.” A beguiling  adventure story, it is also beautifully written, full of keenly observed  details of the river’s wilds, well captured by Joyce Zonana’s new  translation.\"[Full]  of small beauties, like a multifaceted gem....a gentle, meta-fairy-tale about the imagination’s capacity to bring about the very realities it craves, whether we need friendship, adventure, salvation or love.... Zonana retains the conversational, diaristic qualities of Bosco’s prose along with the intensity of its noticings, clearly marking the subtle shifts when the external world of nature becomes the internal world of imagination.\" — Marco Roth, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[\u003ci\u003eThe Child and the River\u003c\/i\u003e is] an idyllic adventure in which the boys rapture over the flora and fauna while living lives of simplicity and ease…which ultimately describes a boy’s rite-of-passage into young adulthood, responsibility, and friendship.\" —Tom Bowden, \u003ci\u003eThe Book Beat\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[Bosco] seems to have sought…to sweep the reader back into the vivid intensities of childhood, summoning the way that time stretches out so that a lovely morning becomes a golden age; evoking the ways that children can scare themselves on purpose, for fun; conjuring the suggestive powers of shadows and footprints and moonlight....In France, “L’enfant et la rivière” is considered as much a book for adults as it is for children. The same, one hopes, will hold true in the English-speaking world.\" —Meghan Cox Gurdon, \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Child and the River \u003c\/i\u003ebrims with lovely nostalgic pleasures….The joy of \u003ci\u003eThe Child and the River\u003c\/i\u003e comes from Pascalet’s gentle, limpid observations of his time on the river, which are generally free of intrusive, muddy 'adult' meditations.\" —Edwin Turner, \u003ci\u003eBiblioklept\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A small gem from Bosco, this book has been described as a French \u003ci\u003eHuckleberry Finn\u003c\/i\u003e even though a comparison with Thoreau’s \u003ci\u003eWalden\u003c\/i\u003e might make more sense. . . . Bosco’s story carries readers into an  innocent childhood world as easily as the current carries the boys on  their adventures.” —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “The poetry of this ecological tale lies in the balance between the power of the forbidden and a quest for the lost childhood paradise that Bosco sought all his life, in his writing and in his dreams.” —\u003ci\u003eLe Temps\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Henri Bosco is the greatest dreamer of our time.” —Gaston Bachelard\u003cb\u003eHenri Bosco\u003c\/b\u003e (1888–1976) was a French writer who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. His family was of Provencal, Ligurian, and Piedmontese origin, and much of his work focused on Provencal life. His novel \u003ci\u003eMalicroix\u003c\/i\u003e was published by NYRB Classics in 2020.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJoyce Zonana\u003c\/b\u003e is a writer and translator. She is the author of a memoir, \u003ci\u003eDream Homes: From Cairo to Katrina, an Exile’s Journey\u003c\/i\u003e, and her writing has been published in \u003ci\u003eThe Hudson Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eSigns\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eMeridians\u003c\/i\u003e, among other publications. She translated Henri Bosco’s novel \u003ci\u003eMalicroix \u003c\/i\u003efor NYRB Classics.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304815513829,"sku":"NP9781681377421","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681377421.jpg?v=1767738665","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-child-and-the-river-isbn-9781681377421","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}