It Is the Wind

by Ferida Wolff, James E. Ransome (Illustrator)

What is the noise I hear,
that wakens me,
that shakens me,
the noise, I hear, in the dark ...
Is it the owl, the cat, or the rabbit?

Lyrical prose by Ferida Wolff and richly textured paintings by Coretta Scott King Award-winning artist James Ransome invite young readers to come along and explore the magical world that opens up between dusk and dawn.

Genres: Picture Books

28 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

About the author

Ferida Wolff (née Mevorach) was born on July 7, 1946, in Brooklyn, New York. She grew up in Brooklyn and Queens, New York, where she enjoyed reading children's books from the public library and writing stories, letters, notes, and diaries. At age twelve, she decided she wanted to become a writer after excelling in a school writing assignment.

Ferida Mevorach married Michael L. Wolff on February 3, 1965. She earned a B.A. degree in 1967 and an M.S. degree in education in 1970, both from Queens College of the City University of New York. Wolff developed her writing by participating in an amateur writers' workshop in Medford, New Jersey, in the late 1970s. In 1980, she began contributing non-fiction pieces to several newspapers and magazines in New Jersey and Pennsylvania as a free-lance writer.

Wolff published her first book, Pink Slippers, Bat Mitzvah Blues, a young adult novel, in 1989. She drew on her daughter Stephanie's experiences as a dancer for the subject matter. Wolff has produced fourteen children's books in all, including three Halloween-themed books and four joke books that she co-authored with her neighbor and published poet, Dolores Kozielski. Listening Outside Listening Inside (1999), a book for adults on the importance of listening to personal messages, grew out of Wolff's long experience with yoga and other meditation techniques. She has taught yoga for almost thirty years and earned a Certificate in Holistic Studies from Rosemont College in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, in 1992.

Ferida Wolff lives with her husband in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and writes full time.

Source: https://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/degrum...

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is great for story time (pre-school or toddler). It's a really simple quiet book with good sounds and soft illustrations. Kids enjoy the pictures too. I had lots of toddlers at story time and I was surprised by how well they noticed the illustrations, they kept stopping me to talk about the owl and the swing and the barn in the book :) It's a book about the wind so I had the children go "swoosh" everytime I turned the page, they enjoyed that also and it helped make the story more interesting.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very poetic book about sounds at nighttime.

[Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book that is like "Goodnight Moon" but with an African American boy. Cultural variety in story books is a positive thing for both African American and non-African Americn children alike.