Ollie’s Valentine. By Olivier
Dunrea. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $6.99.
Harry Potter Coloring Book.
Scholastic. $13.99.
Take well-known series and
move them into new areas and you have what are called “line extensions,” items
(books in this case) that clearly belong with others using the same characters
and topics but that are different enough to take fans in directions in which
they have not yet gone. This is not a simple matter in the “gosling” books by
Olivier Dunrea – the short books about various adorable goslings do not seem to
have anywhere new to go, although Dunrea has previously enlarged the series by
simply introducing new characters. However, Ollie’s
Valentine does find a way to do something different from what Dunrea does
with most other books about the goslings’ simple, endearing adventures. This
board book has little Ollie finding out that all his friends have brightly
colored foil valentines – the illustrations of the hearts are especially
enjoyable – but he does not. He wants one for his own, but everyone carrying a
valentine has just received it from someone else: Gossie from Gertie, Gertie
from BooBoo, BooBoo from Peedie, Peedie from Gideon. Everyone, it seems, is
someone’s valentine, except for poor Ollie. But fear not! Dunrea comes up with
a clever conclusion that makes perfect sense in the context of these stories
and that directly involves the reader (or pre-reader, if an adult is reading Ollie’s Valentine to a very young child)
in making Ollie’s wish come true and making him happy. The way the book ends
ties up the slight tale very neatly, and it is easy to imagine very young
children getting to the conclusion, looking up at the adult reading to them,
and happily saying, “Again!”
Older kids – and even some
adults – looking again to immerse themselves in the world of Harry Potter now
have their own way of getting
directly involved in the story. The Harry
Potter Coloring Book is just what it says: a series of black-and-white
pages showing scenes from Harry’s world and designed to be colored by artists
of any age. These are not drawings from Scholastic’s recent and excellent
pictorial edition of Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer’s Stone, illustrated by Jim Kay. Nor are the pages based on Mary
GrandPré’s illustrations for
Scholastic’s U.S. edition of J.K. Rowling’s novels. Instead, the pages are
drawn from the eight films that brought Harry and his adventures to the screen
– and 16 pages of stills from the films, appearing at the back of the book,
provide guidance on the colors used by the filmmakers and also help artists
remember the movies and all the amazement they generated in theaters. The line
drawings in the book were actually used in the making of the films, so it is no
surprise that some of the book’s scenes look familiar – but not all of them do,
at least in their black-and-white versions. Part of the fun of this book, in
addition to the enjoyment of the coloring, comes from trying to remember which
movie each scene comes from and what exactly was happening at the time. There
are action scenes here (winged keys flying, the Sorting Hat in use) along with
portraits of characters (Harry, Ron, Hermione, Dobby, Hagrid, Voldemort) and views
of important objects (the Golden Snitch, coats of arms of the competing
Hogwarts Houses, wands, even the Weasley brothers’ “Compendium Box of
Pyrotechtrix”). Just leafing through the book should be enough to jog the memory
of Rowling’s readers and those who enjoyed the films. And while the stills from
the movies can be used to provide guidance regarding how the filmmakers saw
various characters and elements of Harry’s world, they can also be used to come
up with different ways to portray the
same things shown on screen. After all, who says the poster advertising the 422nd
Quidditch World Cup has to be colored just as it was at the movies?
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