Stella, Princess of the Sky

Stella and her brother Sam take a night walk to explore the wonders of the sky. The vast, luminous heavens, the stars, and the rising moon form the backdrop for their nocturnal expedition. As Stella and Sam encounter raccoons, fireflies, tree frogs, and bats, Sam wonders if the moon can swim, if the sun wears pajamas, and if he can catch shooting stars with his butterfly net. Stella, as always, has an answer for every question.

A beautiful book in which Stella and her brother Sam explore the natural world at dusk, and see the sunset, the stars and rising moon. As usual Sam is full of questions, and Stella has an answer for everything. Charming and whimsical, worth reading many times over for the pictures and the story of young children discovering the world. A terrific series - highly recommended.

Stella and Sam's life is beautiful. They are good for Emmett but they also always leave me feeling like I got a whiff of the beauty I needed.

Stella, Princess of the Sky, by Marie-Louise Gay was first published in English in 2004. (The book is also available in French as the author is Canadian) then in 2009 it was published in Hungarian, which is the version I read and keep reading. To be more accurate the Hungarian edition is bilingual and is used as a book to teach children between the age of 2 and 5 to learn English. We are going the other way around, I read in Hungarian to my 2+ year old daughter so her Hungarian would improve.

Right now she is much more interested in the drawings than the story. I can't blame her, they are mesmerizing. They were drawn and painted by the author. Here is a great write-up about her background, style and work method.
One might think that Gay's show more loose and distorted drawing style would be casual and random. However, Gay is very meticulous about her illustrations. She will work on one drawing, doing several drafts until she feels that what she has is perfect. ...Each drawing takes about five days to create. After the sketch is complete, she does the pencil roughs, which lead to the final pencil drawings, the lines are inked and then the picture is painted.

Having a redhead protagonist named Stella and gorgeously drawn illustrations already guaranteed the book's success in our home. But having a story line where the siblings teach each other, go for a safe adventure and are in amazing awe of the wonders of the world rounded up the experience to near perfection. I just wish that the book would be longer than 32/44 pages. The good news is that there five more Stella books and three Sam books in English listed at the author's site and two of them are available in the bilingual, Hungarian edition. The books are also being developed into an animated TV series, and will start airing (at least in Canada) next January. show less

i read this book for my bookreport (in french) it's called stella, princesse de la nuit.

this book was pretty good. i liked how the sister shared her knowledge with her brother.she was so caring..but i don't really think that that's realistic.also, the way they talked about "stuff" was really cute.
for example: the brother thought that the say was on fire, but really , it was just the sun setting.
eventhough it was a children's book, i still enjoyed it a lot.

Age Appropriateness: Primary
Genre: Fantasy
Media: Collage
Charactarization: Stella is a flat and static character. She does not change throughout the book. She continues to play the role of older sister answering her brothers questions. We do not know much about Stella except for her knowledge regarding the outdoors.