Kirkus Reviews QR Code
SIMPLE PICTURES ARE BEST by Nancy Willard

SIMPLE PICTURES ARE BEST

By

Pub Date: April 1st, 1977
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Though the photographer insists ""simple pictures are best,"" the shoemaker and his wife want everything to be in their anniversary portrait, from a one-eyed cat to the Hubbard squash in their garden. It's quite a job getting it all in--the shoemaker has to wear one of his wife's hats and dangle his new shoes from his--ears--and ready at last, they can't smile. Not until a bull charges the photographer, which leaves them grinning but hidden behind the beast when the shutter snaps. The formulaic, cumulative text--""one said yes and the other said no and so it went""--is livened by De Paola's pictures of the snowballing silliness that envelops the proud but sappy couple, the disdainful photographer, and his increasingly bemused assistant. Diverting nonsense.