City of Gold (book) facts for kids
Front cover of 1980 hardcover edition
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| Author | Peter Dickinson |
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| Illustrator | Michael Foreman |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Short stories, Bible stories |
| Publisher | Victor Gollancz Ltd |
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Publication date
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1980 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 188 pp (first edition) including bibliography |
| ISBN | 0575028831 |
| OCLC | 472787135 |
| 221.9/505 | |
| LC Class | BS551.2 .D47 1980 |
City of Gold and other stories from the Old Testament is a special book. It's a collection of 33 Old Testament Bible stories. Peter Dickinson retold these stories for young readers. Michael Foreman created the beautiful illustrations. Victor Gollancz Ltd published the book in 1980. This book was so good that Peter Dickinson won the Carnegie Medal. This award is for the best children's book by a British subject. Michael Foreman also received high praise for his illustrations.
City of Gold is unique because it retells these old stories in a new way. It imagines a time before the Bible was written down. Back then, people shared these stories by telling them aloud. The book captures how these tales might have been passed from one person to another.
The book was also published in the United States. Pantheon Books in New York released it in 1980. Otter Books in Boston also published it in 1992. Both kept Michael Foreman's original illustrations.
How the Book Was Created
Peter Dickinson once explained how he came up with his books. He shared this when he received an award for his novel Eva in 2008. For City of Gold, he was asked to retell the stories of the Old Testament. He decided to tell them through the "voices" of different people. These people would be telling the stories for specific reasons. This was how stories were shared when they were only spoken, not written.
His editor, Joanna Goldsworthy, at Gollancz, first asked him to do this project. She wanted a series of retellings illustrated by Michael Foreman. Other books in this series had already retold Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales. They also included folk tales collected by the Brothers Grimm.
At first, Dickinson wasn't sure about the idea. He felt it was hard to retell such important stories today. He worried about mixing stories "for amusement" with deeply held beliefs. But then he found a way. He imagined the "voices" of people who truly believed in these tales. He even credited Rudyard Kipling for inspiring this storytelling technique.
