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CM . . . . Volume XVII Number 38 . . . . June 3, 2011
Australian author-illustrator Stephen Michael King attempts to capture the joys of friendship in his latest offering, You. There is no overt story here as the text is a series of pronouncements about the world we live in issued by a rabbit to a little brown bird:
While the gentle watercolours and the poetic prose are undeniably sweet, the book lacks a consistent tone. In the first few pages, rabbit is painting a birdhouse for his feathered friend while the text discusses the “colours” of the world. This is a promising beginning, seemingly setting the stage for an intimate, private world of friendship shared between two forest friends. But subsequent illustrations of a futuristic, alien city (representing the world’s “big things”) and odd, space-age contraptions resting beside a puzzled-looking grey dog (representing “all sorts of things”) seem completely out of place and fail to illustrate a meaningful bond of friendship between the two animals.
Rather than feeling like an intimate look at the gentle friendship between two animals, You ultimately reads like a series of disjointed, albeit very charming, greeting cards. While this is neither the best choice for a group read-aloud nor a particularly perceptive portrayal of friendship, the text is acceptably expressive and loving enough for sharing between a caregiver and child. An additional purchase. Recommended with reservations. Shannon Ozirny, the Acting Head Youth Services Librarian at the Port Moody Public Library, has a Master of Arts in Children’s Literature.
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A smattering of other animal characters are randomly placed throughout the book to illustrate more poetic concepts like “the world is a musical place.” Youngsters would be more likely to grasp the meaning of such abstract language if there was a consistency of presentation – that is, if the rabbit and bird remained at the centre of the action as they are on the book’s cover and the first establishing pages.