SNAIL AND WORM, OF COURSE

Snail and Worm strike again, with another standout early reader.

In this latest installment of the series, Kügler delivers another bighearted trio of stories about two small friends. The controlled text is told through dialogue only, with careful text placement rather than speech tags indicating the speaker. As in previous titles, the characters’ expressions and posturing enhance the text’s gentle humor in the pals’ interactions, which often hinges on Snail’s naïveté. Achieving expressiveness with anthropomorphic invertebrate body language is an impressive feat, and Kügler’s deft use of simple dots and circles for eyes (or, in Snail’s case, eyestalks) seems akin to character illustrations by James Marshall and Jon Klassen. Characters’ simple faces display a range of emotions, from dismay to uncertainty, sadness, fear, and joy, as Worm helps Snail grapple with the ephemeral nature of a cloud and a dandelion gone to seed, and they both confront the feeling of being too small in a big world. The throughline of the book is reciprocal affection, which expands to include a new friend by book’s end when a turtle approaches Snail and Worm and asks to play with them.

Should you read this terrific book? Of course!