#235 of 1001 · March 23, 2021

Does your group of friends have an odd member out? Someone just a little bit stranger than the others? Maybe it’s you! Or, perhaps, does each group member feel like the weird one? After all, everybody has something that makes them unique. In Three Ladies Beside the Sea by Rhoda Levine and Edward Gorey, one woman’s foibles provoke the curiosity of her closest friends. Edith of Ecstasy, Catherine of Compromise, and Alice of Hazard live together by the sea. Edith and Catherine cannot help but wonder at Alice’s strange habit of spending hour after hour up in a tree. When they finally ask for an explanation, she reveals that she is keeping watch for a bird whose song enchanted her as it flew by long ago. Nothing will dissuade Alice, not even the loan of Edith and Catherine’s own birds, which simply remind her of the bird she once encountered. Eventually, the ending suggests, Alice’s friends accept her as she is. Levine tells her story in rhyming quatrains, the rollicking beat of common meter enhancing the whimsicality of the plot. Gorey employs his signature spare black and white line art with judicious use of hatching, and adds a leitmotivic color scheme, yellow representing Edith and green representing Catherine (Alice stands out once again in perpetual black and white). #ladies #sea #houses #tree #birds #friends #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbook #beautifulbooks #beautifulbookcovers #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks