Brimsby's Hats by Andrew Prahin

-




The illustrations for Brimsby's Hats, the debut picture book from Andrew Prahin, drew me in immediately. At once very much like the style you might find in a graphic novel or animated cartoon, Prahin's illustrations are also cozily charming with an wonderful color palette that changes with the emotional tone of the story and   is a bit out of the ordinary for picture books.  Brimsby's Hats is a visual delight and the story that Prahin weaves for his characters is equally engaging and entertaining and just the tiniest bit somberly ruminative.

Brimsby is a hat maker who seems to be as fond of his friend Badger as he is of making hats. 

While Brimsby sends hats all over the world, Badger has dreams of seeing the world and sailing the seas. When Badger sets sail, Brimsby's life becomes increasingly circumspect and lonely. Prahin conveys this growing feeling over the course of sequential illustrations that further call to mind the graphic novel style of story telling and at a pace that really allows the reader to feel what Brimsby is feeling. In the absence of his friend Badger, Brimsby's lonely life is seen repeating itself quietly across the illustration spreads, over and over, as the seasons change.


When the hat maker realizes just how lonely he has become he sets out on a walk, hoping to make new friends. Trudging through the snow, Brimsby comes upon a treeful of shivering birds shoveling snow out of their nests. They are so hard at work that they don't even notice Brimsby, who heads back home across the blanketed fields. 



 As he walks back home, Brimsby has an idea that opens up the world to him in more ways than one...


Brimsby's Hats is a joy to read, over and over, and I can't wait to see what Andrew Prahin does next!


Source: Review Copy

Popular posts from this blog

Be a Tree! by Maria Gianferrari illustrated by Felicita Sala

-
Image
Be a Tree! by Maria Gianferrari illustrated by Felicita Sala Review Copy from Abrams Kids I picture-walked Be a Tree! three times before I actually read the words. Felicita Sala's illustrations for Maria Gianferrari's poetic text are mesmerizingly immersive and richly colorful within a palette of earth tones. Throughout the text, Gianferrari, who shares her inspiration for this book in the author's note ( Peter Wohleben's The Hidden Life of Trees ), gently maintains the human connection to trees and the connections (and communications) trees share with each other.  Be a Tree!  begins exuberantly, inviting the reader to "Be a tree! Stand tall. Stretch your branches to the sun. Let your roots curl, coil in the soil to ground you." From your spine/trunk to your skin/bark and your heart/pith, the words carry you inward and then zoom outward and up to the canopy and ultimately, the forest. "You are one of many trees," and our roots "twine with fung
Read more

Under Earth, Under Water by Aleksandra Mizielińska and Daniel Mizieliński, 112 pp, RL: ALL AGES

-
Image
Under Earth , Under Water by Aleksandra Mizielińska and Daniel  Mizieliński is their fourth book I have reviewed here and their fourth book with the marvelous Big Picture Press , a publisher of oversized, highly illustrated, gorgeous books who believe that books should be "visually intelligent, surprising, and accessible to readers of all ages, abilities and nationalities." BPP definitely achieves this with every book they publish and, if you are a book lover, you will want to seek out all their titles. Under Earth , Under Water will appeal to anyone who likes to look inside things and understand how things work. With Under Earth, Under Water , the Mizielińskis, who have an illustration style that is filled with tiny details and a unique palette, take readers on a detailed journey, from the top of the page to the bottom, over and under land and then sea. The endpapers serve as the introduction and table of contents, with images scattered across the spread, page nu
Read more

Reading Levels: A Quick Guide to Determining if a Book Is Right for Your Reader

-
Image
While I wrote an article titled Reading Levels: How I Assign Reading Levels to Books, How the Publishers Do It and How You Can Help Your Reader Find the Right Book at the Right Time that discusses how reading levels are determined by professionals and amateurs like myself, there is more on this subject to discuss. Determining the reading level of a book from the children's section is never easy, mostly because there are several different standardized methods of determining reading levels. Add to this the fact that knowing their children's reading level is most often the only tool a parent is armed with when exploring the bookstore, library, website, etc, and the job becomes even more difficult. While I think that knowing a child's reading level is a very valuable tool if your child is reading below grade level, I think that it is a secondary consideration when finding books for children reading above, especially well above, grade level because, in most cases, content app
Read more