For the most part we live in a 'more is better' world. We convince ourselves that we need to have more things to be happy or to be 'successful.' We therefore tend to think that a book with more content is better. This is not always the case. Sometimes less is better and this book serves as an excellent example of this rule. There are no words, there are not many pages, and yet this is a story that children and adults will love.
The Boat
The Boat
Monique Felix
Wordless picture Book
For ages 5 and up
Creative Editions, 2014, 978-1-56846-252-3
A little mouse has run across the blank page. It appears
to be in a frightful hurry and collapses, clearly exhausted from its exertions.
After it has rested, paw to brow, for a while, it starts to chew the corner of
the page. It peeks through the chewed edges at the scene that lies on the other
side and then it pauses to deliberate. Something it has seen on the next page
is worrying the mouse.
The mouse then
makes a decision and it chews and chews until it has chewed a neat large square
out of the middle of the page. As water pours out of the scene on the next page
onto our page we can see why the mouse was worried. The sea is coming out of
the page beyond into our page, and the water level is rising. What is the mouse
going to do?
From the moment
readers start looking at this book they are going to be captivated by the
story. They will feel as if they are looking down at a real mouse who is really
chewing a hole in the page. The mouse is not only realistic, but it also has a
very expressive face (and feet and tail), and readers will be eager to see what
the mouse does next.
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