You Are (Not) Small
Anna Kang and Chris Weyant
Hodder Children’s Books
Size is relative, something that is explored in a very amusing manner courtesy of some fuzzy, ursine-looking creatures herein. When one orange and large encounters one much smaller and purple, he tells him so in no uncertain manner; the purple one however insists he is not small, rather, orange is big. A shouting match ensues with each side growing in number and yelling across the gutter at the other. Both sides are suddenly brought up short by an almighty

followed by the descent of a number of parachute-borne pink creatures to further complicate matters, or rather, to enable the opposing sides to start seeing things from a different perspective. After all that, it’s time for some nosh chaps … However, it seems the new arrivals may have issues of their own.

Minimal words per page in large type, allow the comical, cartoon-style illustrations to do much of the talking.
And talking there surely will be after a sharing of this with any group of children from around five. Not only is there the matter of size, this could be the starting point for discussions about racism, sexism and more.

It’s an Orange Aardvark!
Michael Hall
Words and Pictures (Frances Lincoln Childen’s Books)
Five little ants (sporting hard hats of various colours) residing in an old tree stump are disturbed by a sound outside. What can it be? One – (yellow-hatted) ant decides to make a hole “Like a window!” to see what’s going on. The red-hatted alarmist ant suggests the possibility that a sneaky, grey aardvark might be out there waiting for its next meal – ants! But through the window they see orange. Not an aardvark then… “Aardvarks turn orange when they are hungry for ants” says guess which ant. More drilling by yellow hat… THUNK! blue seeps in through the next hole… “An orange aardvark wearing blue pyjamas!” alarmist ant again. And so it continues : with each new hole comes a new colour … red,

green, yellow … and an even more outrageous elaboration on the ant-eating aardvark notion. Savvy listeners will work out what the ants will eventually see before yellow-hat makes his announcement and the ants emerge to …

Well four of their number anyway.
Crazy cumulativeness, amusing ant talk – “Goodness!” “Gracious!” “Yikes!”, die-cuts (a-la Carle) delight audiences as do the brightly coloured collage-style images and the anticipation as each new idea is added to the imagined creature outside the tree stump. And, so cleverly written – every single word is measured for maximum impact.

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