Skip to main content

Mirror

By

Mirror
by Jeannie Baker
Candlewick; Bilingual edition, 2010. 48 pages. Picture book.

The cover of "Mirror" gives you a clue to the amazing and clever book(s) that is inside. The front shows a nighttime scene of a neighborhood in Australia with a young boy sitting in a window, the Sydney skyline in the background. If you turn the book over, there is another skyline and a young boy sitting in a window at night, but this neighborhood is in the Valley of Roses in Morocco. When you open the cover from either the front or the back, you find two books--one that opens from the left and one that opens from the right. Without words, they tell parallel stories of a day in the lives of two families, one that lives in Morocco and one that lives in Australia. As you go through the books--they are designed so that you can turn the pages simultaneously to see the contrasts and similarities each family experiences--you can see that despite different cultures and environments, there are things that connect us to each other and that are the same no matter where we live.

This message is great, but the way it is presented is what makes "Mirror" so stunning. Each page is an incredible and amazingly detailed collage of various natural and artifical materials including sand, clay, paint, fabric, wool, vegetation, tin and paper. To make it even more interesting and rich, all the text (such as the title, introduction, and end notes) that is included on the Moroccan side is written in beautiful Arabic. You will love the texture and beauty of this book.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

If You Like...KPop Demon Hunters

By
KPop Demon Hunters has been one of the most talked-about movies of the summer. If you loved this movie as much as I did, you don't want the magic (or the music) to stop. Try reading these books that touch on some of the same topics and themes as the animated hit! Brick Dust and Bones By M. R. Fournet New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2023. Fiction. 247 pages. Orphaned Marius works in the family business--as their cemetery's ghost caretaker. However, Marius also moonlights as a monster hunter in order to earn the costly Mystic currency he needs to bring his mother back from the dead. As the window to bring his mother back begins to close, Marius's exploits get more and more dangerous, and he may have set his sights on a monster too big to handle on his own. Like Mira, Marius longs for familial connection, and his work as a monster hunter will satisfy the thrill of demon hunting for fans the movie. Where's Halmoni? By Julie J. Kim Seattle, WA: Little Bigfoot, 2017. Comics. W...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Library in the Woods

By
  The Library in the Woods Written by Calvin Alexander Ramsey Illustrated by R. Gregory Christie Minneapolis, MN : Carolrhoda Books, 2025. Picture Book. I am always intrigued by picture books that tell stories from the past in beautiful and meaningful ways, leaving the reader educated, and also hopeful and inspired. This book definitely did that for me! The cover is a beautiful peek into the story waiting on the pages. Junior and his family have lived on a farm that is having a hard time producing what it needs to for the family to survive economically. The parents make the hard decision to move away from the farm and into the city. Junior misses a lot of things about his life in the country. However, when Junior's friends tell him about a library in the woods, things change for him in the best way! He is amazed by the seemingly endless collection of books, and is eager to check some out for his family. Junior excitedly borrows a few books, including one about a farmer for his dad ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Tumblebaby

By
Tumblebaby Written by Adam Rex Illustrated by Audrey Helen Weber New York : Neal Porter Books/Holiday House, 2024. Picture book. I love a funky picture book. Slumbering Tumblebaby rolls out the door and into a wonderfully meandering yarn, thwarting scoundrels and coyotes, scaling unclimbable mountains, and even building a community center in Colorado City. Adam Rex's text reads like a folksy tall tale, punctuated by funny lines and rhyming chants.  Weber's colorful, round illustrations feel a little Fauvist, a little cubist. It's a sort of "Oh, The Places You'll Go!"  but in reverse - we learn in the last few pages that, in fact, that baby was YOU! This revelation made my young son gasp, which made me choke up.  Tumblebaby is a surreal delight perfect for reading together. 
Post a Comment
Read more