I really like the cover, and many of the illustrations. They evoke a sentimental mood celebrating the grand landscapes of our world and the grand gesture of a small mouse traversing the globe to bring a single crumb to his love. But the text just doesn’t quite hit the mark. It alludes to the sentiment it’s trying to convey, without really managing to make clear what it’s actually trying to say. It’s fuzzy and garbled and falls flat.

Admittedly, I am prejudiced, because I am a fan o David Wiesner’s work. In this nearly wordless picture book, he uses his art to tell the story. It opens with an illustration of a boy standing outside a fence at a baseball field, watching the kids within getting a game going. Then he’s on the edge of the crowd, then approaching the boy who seems to be the leader, who sends the new boy off to the field. After the batter swings, we see our protagonist racing out with his glove outstretched, and with a joyful look on his face the only words in the book repeat the title, right before the boy trips on a root, falling flat, missing the ball while everyone looks on in dismay. Then in the true “Do over” spirit of playground sports, we see a series of fanciful repeats in which the sequence returns to the point where he’s about to catch the ball, with other(s) coming up behind, also with glove(s) outstretched: in one version the root that tripped him is now a full tree; in another the ball grows to the size of an incoming jetliner; in another the whole team goes after the incoming ball while our hero shrinks to the size of one of the others’ shoe, yet still manages to overtake the crowd and actually catch the ball. In the end, he has become part of the crowd of which he was once an outsider.

I’m not sure it lives up to the hype printed on the gold sticker on the cover which proclaims it, “A natural successor to Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” but it does share a similar philosophical bent on the nature of growing up. The text is fairly repetitive: a series of rhyming “before the X…” statements. The point is made via the illustrations, which use a page-turning format to show the struggles that come before each accomplishment/joy/milestone in life. They follow a sequence from the messy kitchen preceding the first birthday cake, to practicing as a student driver before becoming an independent driver, to the studying that leads to graduation. It does point out in the end that for every try you may fail, or you may fly, but what is important is what you learn in the trying.

It’s a fun spin on the old saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” which also exposes children to a variety of animals of which they may be unfamiliar.  The rhyming text and Scheffler’s familiar big-eyed illustrative style make the book fun and inviting.  An author’s note at the front gives readers a context, as the author explains her experience of being on Safari in Africa where others were focused on spotting The Big Five animals, while she found herself more intrigued by The Ugly Five.  In this story, the wildebeest, the hyena, the lappet-faced vulture, the warthog, and the marabou stork each sing about how ugly they are, banding together to form The Ugly Five.  But eventually they come to a gaggle of their own babies, who declare that to them, The Ugly Five are really the The Lovely Five.  A two-page spread in the back shares a variety of other animals that readers might want to investigate, grouped as to The Big Five, The Little Five, The Shy Five, and The Ugly Five.  Throughout the book, illustrations include a variety of other African animals.  One thing I would have liked to see would be another set of pages in the back that named the other animals included in the book, so that curious students would have a starting place for further exploration.

I love this book!  I have loved this book for over 20 years!  I look forward to reading it aloud every year, and I am using this opportunity with the 25^th Anniversary Edition available to spread the word to anyone who does not have this book or is unfamiliar with this book needs to get this book.  It makes a fabulous picture book read aloud for older students, with opportunities to discuss inference and prejudice.  Van Allsburg’s illustrative style does an amazing job of setting the mood and tone of the story.  It makes a great read aloud around Halloween, without being blatantly a Halloween story.  The twist at the end is implied without being explicitly spelled out, allowing readers to put the pieces together for themselves.  And it leaves you cheering for the main character.

The illustrations are rich in blues and purples and greens, a palate that seems appropriate for a bedtime story, and full of details that give the characters personality and give the reader something to study.  The rhyming text describes a variety of troubles the Goodnight Train encounters on its journey which threaten to wake the sleepers aboard, but each challenge is met by the crew, with the refrain of, “Chugga! Chugga! Shhhhhhh! Shhhhhhh!” signaling that calm has once again been restored, and the sleepers are once again slumbering peacefully.

The cotton-candy sweet illustrations are full of warm and fuzzy texture and pastel colors that will be a certain lure to some small children.  The message  is a positive one, if somewhat pedantically delivered.  When a young unicorn is feeling blue over not believing she has any special power, her birdie friend tells her to cheer up, believe in magic, and follow her heart.  Throughout the story this uncertain unicorn encounters several friends who are struggling with applying their special powers, and shares Birdie’s words of wisdom, encouraging each to success. In the end all those she encouraged come to thank her for her gift of friendship, and just as she laments again that she wished she knew what her power was, they reminder her about what she told them, and a rainbow sprouts from her horn as they all cheer that the very best magic of all was believing in themselves.

A fabulous companion book to O’Brien’s other book, I Am New Here.  We see the same characters in the same situations, facing the struggles of being new in school in a place where you don’t speak the language or know anyone, and things all seem different.  But this time the story is told from the perspectives of the children who have been at the school and have been asked to welcome the newcomers.  We see how they want to be welcoming but are unsure what to do, and how they overcome their uncertainties to make new friends.

I am a fan of wordless books, and this one offers many details for the children to hunt out and share what they notice.  The story begins in black and white and gray drawings of a young girl getting up to start her day when everything seems to be going wrong, from mom running late to brother throwing food to getting splashed by a puddle on the way to school in the rain.  And she’s not the only one having a rough day:  around the neighborhood we see someone falling off his bike, another facing a flat tire, a mom dealing with a crying baby, etc. After a thoroughly boring day at school, she notices a butterfly on the way home (the first spot of bright color in the book), and when she follows it, it leads her to a bright pink pair of glasses laying on the ground.  When she puts the glasses on, we turn the page to see them turning her world to one full of bright colors, where everything seems to be going great for everyone.  She wears the glasses for a day, seeing the world in a whole new way, but on the way home the next day she drops the glasses into a stream in the park.  At first she turns all gray again with a look of dismay upon her face, but then she looks around and notices that even without these glasses her world is still full of joy and good things and color (if perhaps not quite the same Technicolor intensity as with the glasses).  The final page turn shows another black and white a gray drawing of a boy looking glum as he comes across the magic pink glasses where they have drifted ashore.

We tend to think of “fake news” and doctored photos as a modern-day phenomenon, a product of the internet and digital photography, but this book tells the tale of two young girls during WWI who used an early camera to convince their parents to believe their tales about the fairies they entertained when playing by the local brook.  Things snowballed, and before they knew it, their photos had become a worldwide sensation, being discussed and evaluated by famous people, including Arthur Conan Doyle.  We so often skip reading Authors’ notes, but in this case, the note in the back of the book is one of the most valuable parts of the book, adding context and perspective, pointing out similar issues between this prank of the past and the modern-day need for discerning truth in what we view and read.  The illustrations are very much in keeping with the era of the story, thus inviting readers in and providing a sense of setting for young readers unfamiliar with the time.