Shape by Shape($13.69Value)

Description

What am I? I lived a long, long time ago. I had round eyes… lots of sharp teeth… This new concept book from Caldecott Honor illustrator Suse MacDonald is sure to entertain children. As readers turn the brightly colored, die cut pages, shapes on each page come together to reveal a creature from long ago. Page by page, MacDonald’s bright, cut-paper, collage-style artwork transforms circles into eyes and triangles into scales until a familiar creature is revealed, with the aid of a large fold-out page, on the final spread. This 9 X 9 jacketed hardcover has die-cut cardstock pages. Introducing a series of basic shapes, die-cuts on sturdy square pages reveal, piece by piece, a friendly dinosaur. The colorful shapes—circle, triangle, crescent, semicircle, oval, and diamond—are presented on the inside cover, followed by the opening question: “Do you know who I am?” Each vibrantly colored left-hand page contains a bit of text, while the black right-hand pages feature the cutouts, each revealing a new aspect of the mystery beast, in the manner of Ed Emberley’s Go Away, Big Green Monster! (1993). A fold-out triple-page spread at the end shows the whole dinosaur, an appealingly rounded creature made up of all the various shapes, with the addition of a big red heart. The saturated colors, including four different shades of green, add to the appeal of this playful picture book. Small readers will probably focus more on the monster than the titular concept in this entertaining and modestly educational title. Preschool-Grade 2. --Kathleen Isaacs Suse MacDonald published her first book, Alphabatics , for Simon & Schuster in 1986. This book won a Caldecott Honor in 1987, kicking off a prolific and successful career. Suse continues to write and illustrate books for children, including Fish, Swish! Splash, Dash!: Counting Round and Round , Alphabet Animals: A Slide and Peek Adventure , and Dino Shapes . Suse loves to work in her studio and finds pleasure in encouraging readers to make their own artistic discoveries. Suse lives in Arvada, Colorado, with her husband, Stuart.