resilience

Review: The Girl and the Bicycle by Mark Pett

| Tasha

girl and the bicycle

The Girl and the Bicycle by Mark Pett

This follow up to The Boy and the Airplane features a girl who is longing for a new green bike that she sees in a shop window when walking with her little brother.  But she doesn’t have enough money for it, even after emptying her piggy bank, digging through pockets in the laundry and looking under the couch cushions.  She even tries selling lemonade and her toys.  That autumn, she has another idea to make money and finds someone willing to pay her for raking leaves.  She continues to do chores for them through the winter and into the next summer.  Finally, she has enough money for the bicycle.  But when she gets to the store, the bike is gone.  Don’t worry, her hard work will pay off in the end!

Pett has a touch for wordless picture books. The subtle humor throughout also helps make the book very readable and approachable for children.  They will relate to the longing for a new toy and through this book will learn about the power of resilience, hard work and patience. 

Pett’s subjects could easily veer into saccharine qualities, but that is nicely avoided thanks to his deft timing throughout the book and the way that the sweet endings come with real sacrifice and work on the part of the characters.  His illustrations have a vintage feel but also a modern cartoon aspect.  Done in sepia tones, the dark green of the bike pops clearly on the page. 

A wordless book for slightly older preschoolers, this book is a rewarding read.  Appropriate for ages 4-6.

Reviewed from copy received from Simon & Schuster.

Review: The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires

| Tasha

most magnificent thing

The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires

A little girl and her best friend, her dog, loved to do all sorts of things together.  Most of all, she loved to build and he loved to unmake things.  Then one day the girl had a great idea she was going to make “the most magnificent thing.”  First she figured out what it would look like, how it would work, and then came the easy part, making it!  She hired her dog as her assistant and they set out to find parts.  She built the thing, but when she and her dog stepped back, it wasn’t magnificent at all!  So she tried again, and again, and again.  Finally, after trying many times, she hurt her finger and she was very angry about all of the time, and the failures, and was ready to give up.  Luckily though, her assistant was there to give her encouragement to give it one more try, after a long walk.

Spires, the author of Binky the Space Cat, has created an ingenious little book.  Through clever storytelling she has written about the process of trial and error, the process of following through on a design and testing it, the creative process itself.  This is a young heroine with so much resilience and determination!  Her failures make her all the more brilliant and successful in the end.  And perhaps my favorite little twist is that people in her neighborhood find their own uses for her failed attempts. 

The art has the same wonderful modern quirkiness as her Binky books.  Though this is not a graphic novel format, she does use panes in her illustrations, making the iterations of her designs all the more fun to explore.  Done with minimal colors except for bursts of red, the illustrations are perfect for a design process.

Get this into the hands of math teachers who will appreciate a very readable book about trial and error.  It is also the perfect book for little girls to be inspired to use tools and create their own designs.  Appropriate for ages 4-6.

Reviewed from copy received from Kids Can Press.