 Front cover of Sylvester and the Magic Pebble | |
| Author | William Steig |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | William Steig |
| Cover artist | William Steig |
| Genre | Children's book |
| Publisher | Windmill Books/Simon & Schuster |
Publication date | September 24, 1969 |
| Publication place | United States |
| ISBN | 0-671-66269-4 |
| OCLC | 6087743 |
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble is a children's picture book written and illustrated by William Steig, and published in 1969. It won the Caldecott Medal in 1970.
Sylvester Duncan, a young donkey from the fictional community of Oatsdale, collects pebbles "of unusual shape and color." One day he finds a spherical red pebble that grants wishes. Immediately afterward, a lion scares Sylvester, and as a defense he wishes himself into a rock--the only thing he could think of at the moment. Unfortunately, the magic pebble falls off the rock, and Sylvester is unable to revert to his donkey form as the pebble must be in contact with the wish-maker to work. The rest of the story deals with the resulting aftermath: Sylvester's personal attempt to change back into his true self and Mr. and Mrs. Duncan's search for their only child.
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble earned Steig the 1970 Caldecott Medal, his first of many Caldecott and Newbery Medal honors. [1] The book was nominated for the 1970 National Book Award for Young People's Literature (losing out to Isaac Bashevis Singer's A Day of Pleasure). [2] In 1978, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble was given the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award.
The book was also featured on an episode of Between the Lions . [3]
In 1993, Weston Woods Studios adapted this book to an animated movie, narrated by John Lithgow and directed by Gene Deitch, with music by Steig's son, jazz flautist Jeremy Steig.
The story is used as an example by Noam Chomsky in the documentary film Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? by Michel Gondry.
The book sparked some controversy, for its portrayal of the police as pigs, and, as a result was not stocked by public schools and libraries in parts of the United States. [4]
The John Newbery Medal, frequently shortened to the Newbery, is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), to the author of "the most distinguished contributions to American literature for children". The Newbery and the Caldecott Medal are considered the two most prestigious awards for children's literature in the United States. Books selected are widely carried by bookstores and libraries, the authors are interviewed on television, and master's theses and doctoral dissertations are written on them. Named for John Newbery, an 18th-century English publisher of juvenile books, the winner of the Newbery is selected at the ALA's Midwinter Conference by a fifteen-person committee. The Newbery was proposed by Frederic G. Melcher in 1921, making it the first children's book award in the world. The physical bronze medal was designed by Rene Paul Chambellan and is given to the winning author at the next ALA annual conference. Since its founding there have been several changes to the composition of the selection committee, while the physical medal remains the same.
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William Steig was an American cartoonist, illustrator and writer of children's books, best known for the picture book Shrek!, which inspired the film series of the same name, as well as others that included Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Abel's Island, and Doctor De Soto. He was the U.S. nominee for the biennial and international Hans Christian Andersen Awards, as both a children's book illustrator in 1982 and a writer in 1988.
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