Product Details
All Things Bright and Beautiful

All Things Bright and Beautiful
By Cecil Frances Alexander

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Product Description

Written in 1848, this beloved hymn celebrating the wonders of Creation is given new life in Anna Vojtech's glowing interpretation. Lushly detailed paintings follow two children and their frisky pup through a bucolic landscape of meadows, hills, rivers, streams, and woods. Throughout the seasons, the youngsters explore and enjoy the wealth of treasures to be found -- things bright and beautiful, great and small, wise and wonderful, the glory of it all.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #1298055 in Books
  • Published on: 2004-08-01
  • Original language: English
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 24 pages

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 3–While there are other lovely illustrated versions of this 19th-century song, Vojtech's glorious edition is a worthy choice. The familiar words are brought to life in spreads that include two pictures, one framed inside the other. The outer picture is less a border than an enhancement of the inner image. For example, the first pages show a girl and a boy looking out over a field filled with a variety of animals, and close-ups of the creatures are scattered around the outer frame. For "All things wise and wonderful,/the Lord God made them all," the larger painting shows a family of swans swimming in a pond where frogs gamble and large dragonflies flit about. The outer image flows beyond the water to the woods and sky nearby. Viewers' eyes are drawn back and forth between the two scenes, following a turtle's path across a branch and the dragonfly's tail bursting out of the frame. The watercolors are fresh and richly drawn with fine details such as the veins on a lady slipper and the whiskers of a mouse. The book concludes with stargazing children and fireflies sparkling in the night sky. A wonderful addition that readers will return to again and again.–Bina Williams, Bridgeport Public Library, CT
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About the Author

Cecil Frances Alexander was born in Ireland. She began writing poetry as a child and wrote nearly 400 hymns. She wrote "All things Bright and Beautiful, " one of her most popular, to help explain to children the opening words of the Apostles' Creed, a Christian statement of belief. The wife of an archbishop, she was known to be a generous woman who cared for the poor and opened a school for the deaf with her sister.


Anna Vojtech has illustrated numerous books for children, mostly folktales and stories about nature. Nature has always been a strong source of inspiration for Anna. Her pictures are full of flowers and animals, of giraffes and elephants, of little birds and chipmunks. Folktales are also about people, their nature and their spirit. Her illustrations have brought readers closer to the stories and traditions of their countries.
Anna grew up in Prague, Czechoslovakia, what is now the Czech Republic. "Prague was a magical place to grow up. We were surrounded by beauty, mystery, history and by nature." She studied art and toy design at the School of Applied Arts and animation film and graphics at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague. Later she attended the Royal Academy in Antwerp, Belgium and the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg, Germany where she met her German-American husband.
Since 1982 she has lived on Cape Ann, Massachusetts with her husband and their two sons.