STRONG AS STONE

A prehistoric girl saves the day with courage and kindness.

Stone, who appears to live during the Stone Age, lives in a small mountain village amid bison, elk, and mastodons. She and her father are close, and when he becomes ill, she knows she is the only “willing warrior” to take the arduous journey to secure the cure for him, which is guarded by vicious bears. Since her father taught her to be fierce and strong, she knows she can do it. When she encounters a huge, horned beast, she scares it with a brave, loud cry but then decides to comfort and befriend it. The two journey to where the cure lies, and when Stone responds with kindness to the ferocious bears, they become friends: “Kindness made Stone…as strong as stone.” The book possesses the emotional formula of a typical animated Disney film with its focus on the father-daughter relationship; its dramatic tableaux with modulations in light that support the book’s emotional undercurrents (Stone picks the healing flower by a setting sun with her new bear BFF by her side); earnest characters and emotionally anthropomorphized creatures (the girl and the beast laugh and play together, and a bear altogether dismisses the idea of the food chain when Stone hugs it); and its emphasis on a moral takeaway. A happy father-daughter reunion wraps up the tale. All human characters have light-brown skin and straight, darker brown hair. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-18-inch double-page spreads viewed at 75.6% of actual size.)

A sentimental Stone Age saga.