美國知名繪本家芭芭拉・庫尼以簡潔純粹的筆觸，改寫這則流傳七百年的法國傳奇故事《聖母院的小丑》。故事中的巴納比，是位平凡的雜耍藝人，無法用華麗的歌聲或珍貴的財寶獻給聖母，最後，他選擇以手中的雜耍技藝表達真心。本書融合中世紀詩歌、法國作家亞納托爾・法朗士的小說，以及馬斯奈的同名歌劇元素，傳遞出「每個人都能用自己的方式貢獻美好」的溫暖訊息。庫尼以細膩插畫，營造出中世紀的典雅氛圍，讓這個關於信念與奉獻的經典故事，持續感動著不同世代的讀者。Like many others who have retold the tale of the juggler, the American children’s book author and illustrator Barbara Cooney (1917–2000) dropped clues about her sources of inspiration. In the foreword to the first edition of 1961, she reported having been exposed to the story first on the radio in 1945. She knew that the roots of the story stretch back seven hundred years to a poem from France—her title page describes it as “an Old French legend.” When researching her project, Cooney journeyed to the Parisian library that holds the thirteenth-century manuscript with the best text and the sole illumination extant from the Middle Ages. Among other manifestations of the narrative that caught her attention, Cooney singled out the opera of French composer Jules Massenet, “The J
