Today Caramel reviews The Red Book by Barbara Lehman, first published in 2004. As usual, Sprinkles is taking notes and asking questions.
Sprinkles: So Caramel, you chose a beautiful picture book for today’s review. Can you tell us a bit about it?
Caramel: Yes. This book has no words. So any bunny can read it!
S: That sounds interesting!
C: It is! Remember that book I reviewed way back, The Book With No Pictures? This is kind of the opposite. There are pictures but no words.
S: But there is a story?
C: Yes. It is kind of complicated though.
S: How so?
C: So there is a girl walking in the snow in a big city, and she finds a red book in the snow.
S: Is it not destroyed in the snow?
C: No. And she opens the red book and begins to look through its pages and finds the picture of an island in the middle of an ocean. And then she looks more closely and on the island is a boy who is reading a red book of his own. And here is the shocking part: In the red book the boy is holding you can see the girl from the big city!
S: Wait! So the girl’s book shows the boy whose book shows the girl?
C: Yes. Like when you have two mirrors and you see the reflection of your reflection.
S: Okay. I can see how you could make such a comparison.
C: But wait! The weirdness is not over yet. The girl in the city finds a lot of balloons and then flies into the air and gets herself to the boy’s island. And then we see both of them sitting on the beach. And then the red book closes! And there is another person who finds the book and takes it with him.
S: That is interesting Caramel! Very self-referential! Do you know what that means?
C: Yes I think so. I think it means when you talk about yourself. And the red book is talking about itself. Because we are reading the red book which is telling a story about a red book, in which there is another red book…
S: Yes! It really is like the infinitely many reflections you can see in two mirrors facing one another!
C: But that can be confusing! This is not. This is just nice.
S: I agree Caramel. This is really a very sweet book. What did you think about the drawings?
C: I thought they were pretty good. They are simple, but they do not need to be more complicated anyways. I like how the red book is always sticking out on the pages you can see it.
S: True! I like that too! So how did it feel to read a book that did not have any words?
C: Good. The story was nice so I really liked it.
S: You also read and reviewed another book which had no words: Robot Dreams by Sara Varon.
C: I remember that book! And it was a good book and it was about friendship too. But that was kind of sad and this one is just happy.
S: And you like that of course!
C: Of course!
S: Okay, so maybe this is a good time to wrap up this review. What would you like to tell our readers Caramel?
C: Stay tuned for more book bunny reviews!
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