This is such a sweet little book. I’m weak to found family stories and the relationship between Tito and Alberto is so sweet.

Krása.

I did like the imagery in this children title.
Thank you to Toppsta for this prize.
A man who makes things from wood lives in a colourful town, where the sea is so vicious it sends the fish slamming into the houses, he makes things for his 3 children.
~When a plague arrives his family die, and he becomes the coffin maker. Making a coffin for himself it is some years before he uses it to bury a woman who was known to the town, although they don't know where she came from.
A bird comes, followed shortly by a boy who steals from the coffin maker. An odd friendship is formed and all is well until the man hunting his runaway wife arrives.
Nosy neighbours, foolish fishermen and a friendly baker made this a very enjoyable read. My copy did not have the illustrations which had page spaces marked so I would like to see the finished copy.
It has a mystical air of fable about it and I am sure it will capture many fans.

___Received ARC for early review__

First off, this book is a beautiful object. ALl printed in a lovely shade of blue ink, with matching hand-drawn borders printed on each page. They're lovely drawings, not obtrusive but just sortof there, as though you're reading in a park and there's a breeze catching at the corner of your attention. There's the occasional full page illustration, also lovely, also unobtrusive. They don't pull you out of the story but they do hold your attention long enough to add to it. I imagine the actual hardback will be stunning.

The story itself? Probably only four stars. It's a little too real to be a fable, but a little too fabulous to be real. I think it's aiming for the level of fantasy of Marquez, or of some of Calvino's tamer works, but it doesn't commit quite fully enough. This is dipping a toe into something that needed a swan dive into the deep end. Still with that criticism, I would read the author's next works, in the hopes that time would give her the confidence to go farther from shore. Even if it doesn't, this book was a story worth reading.

A simple, but sweet story, one that might be a little too young for me to enjoy.

It does have some nice tender moments, but the tension of Tito's father came a little too late and fast into the story with a rushed resolution.

Is it odd I was expecting something a bit more morbid with that title though?

Magical Realism story that stays on the side on magic. A coffin maker learns his trade by burying his entire family, but then is slowly brought back to love by a boy and his amazing bird. Evil threatens again, but love will find a way. I do wish there had been a live female who wasn't evil, but I can only think of one woman in the whole book.

THOROUGHLY delightful. It's fast paced without ever sacrificing depth and you feel the horror of the Boy's father coming after him all the more keenly because it's so true to life. He doesn't care about Tito at all, but Tito was his possession, and so he offers a massive reward for his son's capture. The mayor is a comic character without ever tipping over into too much, and Alberto is burdened by grief but still so clearly full of love. The scene where he is going door to door looking for sweets and we see how much his neighbors and the village in general love him is such a beautifully understated one and I am holding it very close to my heart forever.
As soon as I finished the book I thought to myself "this was either written by a Nordic author or an Australian one" and yep, Matilda Woods is Australian. Something about Australian books are just a notch above most North American ones.

Krása.