Sunday, October 7, 2012

South - Patrick McDonnell

(creator of the comic strip "Mutts")
2008, Little Brown & Co.
$14.99 HC
www.muttscomics.com
Goodreads: 4.43
my rating:  Liked it a lot (4.5)
40 pgs. & endpapers
Endpapers (& all pages) recycled beige

This simple, wordless picture book is super -- sweet and quite a lovely story.  It is autumn.  A flock of songbirds takes off for the south and forgets one of their own, who is asleep on the ground under a tree.  Along comes a cat who helps him through all sorts of strange,foreign terrain...pages and pages of a journey....until they come upon the bird's flock, resting on a telephone wire.  By now the bird and cat are close friends and their parting is a meaningful one.

Yes, my fourth graders could write a lovely story to go with this.  The simple beige/brown/pale yellow pages could easily be photocopied for students to use -- and even water color in the pale blues and greens that appear here and there.

(Note to self:  Check out other books by this author.  Are they wordless?  (The Gift of Nothing, Art, Just Like Heaven, Hug Time.)  "Sometimes it takes a friend to help you find your way."

No comments: