The White Book
by minibombo
First published in Italy in 2013 as Il libro bianco, by Silvia Borando, Lorenzo Clerici, and Elisabetta Pica.
Candlewick Press, 2015. 44 pages.
This book makes me smile.
It’s a wordless picture book. The background, like the title says, is white.
We see a boy with several buckets of paint and a paint roller.
Each time he rolls a different color of paint on the pages, a different animal appears, made of the new color of paint, and outlined in white. This makes the boy smile.
But then the animal does something to make the boy frown. The birds fly away. The fish swim away. The dinosaur is scary. The elephant is too big. The giraffe is too tall.
The final animal is – you guessed it – a dog.
Without words, we can easily see that this animal is just right.
This book is for young kids who won’t even wonder how using a roller could outline these animals. Without words, with just simple expressions on the boy’s face, there’s so much to talk about. You can start with colors and animal names, but it won’t be long before kids will be talking about the boy’s feelings and maybe how they would feel about each animal appearing before them.
I do think it’s funny that there’s a copyright notice for the “English translation” at the front. Okay, they did translate the title. And the copyright notice information. I looked at minibombo’s website, and I hope that more titles from this Italian publisher are forthcoming.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Picture_Books/white_book.html
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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.
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