Synopsis: This book provides readers with a wordless selection of interconnected, mixed-media, full-colour pictures of everyday subjects.

Review: The slightly mundane front cover of this book belies its inner classiness and delightful quirkiness. The wordless pages burst with all sorts of images, from intriguing photos to highly artistic printmaking, to naive drawings, photos of sculptures and miniature 3-D rooms, splodges of colourful paint and sand sculptures. This book will inspire both conversation and ideas for craft projects in a range of media. One could easily imagine an adult who has difficulty communicating with a child giving this book as a gift and sitting down to talk through it with the child. Then the two could go on to make a piece of artwork portraying an everyday object around them, using the book as a guide. Or perhaps it could be a valuable aid in getting a child to talk in a counseling session.

Square shaped and small, but thick with 256 pages, this book gives too much material for a single reading. Rather, it seems designed so that readers can dip in and out of it. Each pictures in some way relates the one following; very often several pictures in a row express a theme in very different ways. For example, one sequence shows a painting of a town with a paper airplane glued on to the top of the picture, followed by a painting of an airplane, then a photo of clouds from an airplane window; a painting of clouds; a painting of a giraffe's head against a cloudy sky; a photo of some plastic animals (including a giraffe) staring at a TV screen with clouds on it; a painting of a sky full of lightening; a painting of rain; a photo of a child sitting on grass under an umbrella; a painting of a snail; a painting of abstract spiral shapes, a black-and-white photo of raindrops in a puddle; a painting of a frog on a lilypad; a photo of a papier-maché duck getting soaked under a garden hose.

Milet prides itself on providing multicultural and multilingual books; this book easily spans a wide range of ages and needs no specific language to enjoy.

2008-02-04