Almost an artist’s book rather than a book for children, this artfully constructed alphabet book holds its strength in design rather than beauty, although a few of the images are incidentally beautiful. For each opening, the verso holds a capital and lower-case letter, a single word beginning with that letter and a phrase describing the medium of the image in the photograph opposite, in which the word appears: “Ll / Love / Carved in wood. Tree-trunk monument.” The letters themselves are dropped out, filled in with a piece of their photograph: The letters Qq are printed in the pattern of the vinyl flooring of the decal shadows that make the word “queen.” Beam took these photographs of words in the city of Toronto; the text was written by author and children’s librarian Schwartz. The words, as one might imagine, tend to the random—“brute,” “evoke,” “um.” Fascinating, but probably more for young adults than for children. It will certainly have readers seeing their own cities with new eyes. (Picture book. 10 & up)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-88899-928-3
Page Count: 60
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2009
1882
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-689-82979-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
For all its brevity, chockablock with philosophical topics to ponder and debate.
In the wake of Triangle (2017), a further raft of ontological posers in stripped-down geometric garb.
Square, an unreflective sort, regards hauling large cubes of rock from the depths of his secret cave to a hilltop every day as his “work.” He is set to a new task, though, after Circle praises him as a “sculptor” and a “genius,” then commissions a portrait. Cluelessly setting to with a hammer and chisel to carve a “perfect” representation of Circle from a stone block, Square is left at the end of the day in the middle of a ring of rubble. Despairingly, he falls asleep as rain begins to fall. Next morning the despair is still there—so when Circle floats up and sees her reflection in the puddle that’s accumulated overnight her response is unexpected: “It is perfect,” she says. “You are a genius.” Barnett’s closing “But was he really?” leaves readers (those who have the appropriate patience and experience, anyway) to judge for themselves. Square’s downcast eyes as he looks at his own reflection in the puddle heighten the ambiguity. With typically deceptive minimalism Klassen places a few flat, blocky shapes on the white pages to suggest the physical landscape, angling Square’s body and glance to convey the emotional one. Humor is in the details: a bit of twig that catches on harried Square’s head and stays there; the shadow that appears beneath Circle as she floats along through the air.
For all its brevity, chockablock with philosophical topics to ponder and debate. (Picture book. 10-adult)Pub Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9607-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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