A Rare Van Allsburg: The Widow’s Broom

Reading List
Written By Rebecca Grabill

The Widow’s Broom by Chris Van Allsburg. Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

A clever and harrowing tale with a surprise ending. Van Allsburg confronts ignorance in an Aesop’s Fables sort of way. Yet he has a non-traditional twist in that the witch’s broom, normally seen as evil, ends up being good. Illustrations are what one would expect from Van Allsburg, detailed pencil, pointillism, heavy with mood and filled with texture and detail.

His choice to shun color helps the reader notice detail and lends the book a timeless feel.

Rebecca Grabill

Rebecca has been writing since childhood, her first book about a kitten published between homemade cardboard covers in second grade. Although she studied religion and philosophy in university, she continued writing, earning an MFA from Hamline University and publishing multiple picture books (no longer with homemade covers) and a collection of poetry with a variety of New York and independent publishers. She has also published a wide array of fiction, essays, and poetry in magazines and journals and photographs for Getty Images. She balances writing with homeschooling the younger of her six children, launching her young adults, church activities, and overseeing a small flock of chickens in rural West Michigan.

www.rebeccagrabill.com
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