Pine & Boof: The Lucky Leaf.
By Ross Burach. Harper. $17.99.
Meow! By Victoria Ying.
Harper. $15.99.
Both these books are for
ages 4-8, but the way they tell their animal-centric stories could not be more
different. Ross Burach’s Pine & Boof:
The Lucky Leaf really is a story, a narrative. The illustrations are an
integral part of it, and some of them are marvelously funny, but the basic tale
here is a verbal one. It starts with Boof, a big, roly-poly bear cub who is
afraid of bears (adult ones, anyway) and therefore carries around a can of anti-bear
spray. Boof collects and names things, such as a stick named Mr. Stick and a
rock named Mr. Rock. His favorite collectible is a bright red leaf with which
he plays constantly, but not very successfully: despite Boof’s enthusiastic
urging, the leaf cannot use a see-saw, throw a ball, or munch a campfire-cooked
marshmallow. Enter Pine, a porcupine – who in fact enters by banging into Boof
as Boof sits teary-eyed on the forest path. Boof is crying because the wind has
suddenly picked up and taken his favorite leaf who-knows-where. Pine, who
considers himself an expert on lots of things but is mostly rather muddled in
his thinking, promises to help Boof find the missing leaf, and the two set off
on a leaf quest that leads to some very funny encounters with a boar and a
snake. Burach’s illustrations are at their best during the search, as when Boof
lifts up a boulder to look for the leaf under it and Pine then lifts up
boulder-shaped Boof to look for the leaf under him. A stuck-in-a-log scenario eventually and hilariously ensues,
but in the end, the wind is just too much for the intrepid duo. However, they
realize that having a friend to search for things with and generally play with
is better than having a leafy companion, anyway. So all ends happily, with Pine
and Boof cooking apology pancakes for the boar and making a very amusing
apology card for the snake. This is a funny story, amusingly told and
illustrated with cartoonish panache, with the pictures carrying a lot of the
humor but the words being central to telling the tale.
Not so in Victoria Ying’s Meow! In fact, the word of the title is
almost the only one in this sweet little feline-focused book, which is such a
simple story that multiple words really are not required. An adorable little
kitten, childlike in being dressed like a human and drawn by Ying with a head
as large as the rest of his body, wanders around the family home carrying a
ball of yellow yarn and asking everyone, “Meow?” This clearly means, “Will you
play with me?” But nobody will: mom is busy in the garden, dad in the kitchen,
and sister in a chair, where she is reading a book. Frustrated, the kitten
starts to unravel the yarn ball and play by himself – but what he does is to
entangle everything and everyone in the yarn, as the word “meow!” gets angrier
and angrier (cleverly shown by the style of the lettering, which mirrors the
expressions on the kitten’s face). Mom, dad and sister finally band together to
stop the kitten from messing everything up, putting him in a time-out with
their own obviously very irritated “Meow!!” The sad little kitten apologizes –
the same word serves a new purpose this time – and sets about disentangling
everything and cleaning up the mess he has made. Then he helps mom in the
garden, helps dad bake mouse-shaped cookies, and sits in the chair with his
sister to read her book with her. Then
everyone gets together for games with the yarn, after which it is
get-ready-for-bed time in a household that is clearly much happier than it was
earlier. The various expressions of “meow” eventually end with the kitten
happily asleep, purring with contentment, his ball of yarn beside him on the
pillow. Ying does a lovely job of making what is essentially a single-word book
into one expressing a wide variety of recognizable emotions and feelings,
showing that while some stories are best told through a whole series of words,
others can be just as well expressed with very little in the way of verbal
elements.
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