Marguerite Gautier was the most beautiful, brazen-- and expensive--courtesan in all of Paris. Despite being ill with consumption, she lived a glittering, moneyed life of nonstop parties and aristocratic balls and savored every day as if it were her last. Into her life came Armand l)uval. Young, handsome, recklessly headstrong, he was hopelessly in love with Marguerite, but not nearly rich enough. Yet Armand was Marguerite's first true love, and against her better judgment, she threw away her upper-class lifestyle for him. But as intense as their love for each other was, it challenged a reality that would not be denied。
After a decade-long absence, Mayer returns to picture books, using computer-generated graphics to illustrate an original tale set in long-ago Japan. When the emperor's daughter, Shibumi, discovers the poverty-stricken world beyond her garden walls, she longs to resolve the inequity. Tying herself to an enormous kite fashioned for her by the royal kite-maker, she takes flight, telling her father that she will not come down until the city below "is as beautiful as the palace, or the palace is as squalid as the city." Wealthy noblemen who wish to preserve the status quo mount an attack, and the kite carries off both Shibumi and the kite-maker. The bereaved emperor spends his years trying to make amends, and in the end a young samurai sets out to find the princess and restore her to her father and the transformed city. Mayer grounds his message in familiar fairy tale elements, and proceeds at a leisurely pace. His computer art approaches the brooding style of his paintings in East of the Sun & West of the Moon (a
Presents sheer myths and some stories based in fact about the controversial pirate who aided the United States in the War of 1812, but returned to his life of piracy thereafter. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
