Children of all ages will delight in its song and story. --Charles
Martin, author of Signs & Wonders
Davey McGravy, Davey McGravy,
a name to conjure with,
to dream with by the cedar trees
out in the rainy woods.
In a misty, faraway-feeling land of rain, Davey McGravy lives with his
father and brothers, but mourns his missing mother. He follows the
rhymes in his head into a forest of ferns, moss, and cedar trees where
he meets animals wise and strange. A coaxing crow urges him onwards. A
consoling peacock tells him that nothing is really lost. A fierce
lioness frightens him. Following their voices, Davey travels deeper and
deeper into the mysterious woods. Then he must find his way home, to a
father who is sad but loving, and brothers who care for him no matter
how they fight.
Caught between his forest-world and the world of school, shopping, and
family life, Davey wanders his way through grief. With playful and
evocative verse, poet David Mason delivers him back to his boyhood but
leaves the mysteries of love intact. Full of humor and melancholy,
Davey McGravy movingly captures the longing of a child for his lost
mother.
Across a series of poems, accompanied by early-Sendakesque etchings by
artist Grant Silverstein, we meet a little boy named Davey McGravy
living in the tall-treed forest with his father and brothers. A few
tender verses in, we realize that Davey is caught in the mire of
mourning his mother. Without invalidating the deep melancholy that has
set in, Mason makes room for the mystery of life and death, inviting in
the miraculous immortality of love...Only a rare poet can merge the
reverence of Thoreau with the irreverence of Zorba the Greek to create
something wholly unlike anything else -- and that is what Mason
accomplishes in Davey McGravy. --Brain Pickings
From his first full-length narrative poem, The Country I Remember, to
his extraordinary verse novel, Ludlow, David Mason's ambition to
expand the realm of narrative in contemporary verse has been central to
his poetic project, even as successive collections revealed him as one
of the best lyric poets of his generation. The latest proof of Mason's
necessity, Davey McGravy, is both a vibrant celebration of language as
play and the moving tale of how a young boy discovers, through
heartbreaking loss, the transformative powers of the imagination.
Children of all ages will delight in its song and story. --Charles
Martin, author of Signs & Wonders
David Mason is the author of numerous books of poetry and the
verse-novel Ludlow. He was poet laureate of Colorado from 2010 to
2014, and he now divides his time between Colorado and Oregon.
Grant Silverstein, the illustrator, specializes in etchings.
