Tag Rock and Roll

Rock and Roll

jillrbennett Leave a comment

Rock and Roll
Ruby Amy Thompson
Little Tiger

Meet Rock and Roll. Rock is grey and hard; he also hates attention. Roll is a golden yellow colour, squashy and loves attention. They always appear on opposite pages – Rock on the verso, Roll on the recto. They don’t seem to have much in common but wait. Despite coming from very different worlds,

they are both great team players; they both look fabulous in green; both love fancy dress and both remain calm when under pressure

Yes they’re always on different pages but though strong as a rule, sometimes Rock is soft, Roll, on the other hand has the strength to give comfort. It appears that this is a friendship that can rock and roll. Assuredly, these two have found common ground.

With its seemingly simple text, and clever layout, this is a picture book that’s bursting with heart and can initiate deep thinking on the part of listeners. Wise and wonderful is what I’d call the creator’s debut picture book.

Rock and Roll

jillrbennett Leave a comment

Rock and Roll
Hazel Terry
Tiny Owl

The book reminded me slightly of Michael Foreman’s classic picture book The Two Giants.

Meet two boulders Rock and Roll, the former stands flat, the latter stands tall and so it has been in the mountains for countless years with both of them awestruck by the world’s magnificent beauty no matter the season, or be it day or night. 

Both are proud of how long they’ve’ stood and of the visual evidence of their endurance.

Then one fateful day everything changes: people come to visit Rock and Roll, delighting them and bringing them such gifts as flags, piles of small stones and necklaces of bunting. 

That is at first, but then each rock begins to resent the new adornments given to the other. Roll moans to the wind making unkind comments about Rock’s colourful flags: Rock in turn, talks to a cloud complaining about Roll’s crown and saying callous things.

Consequently wind and cloud become upset, bashing into one another and arguing about ‘their’ respective boulders.

A vicious storm of thunder and lightning strikes the boulders sending them hurtling down the mountainside breaking apart as they go.

Eventually all that remains of Rock and Roll are small pieces of detritus. With all those arguments having rolled far away, happiness comes in their place and with it, a sharing of the things that precipitated the fallout.

Not only is Hazel Terry’s debut picture book a thought-provoking fable with themes of jealousy and its consequences, and being in harmony with the self, with awesome fossil prints on every page, it’s a thing of real beauty. It truly celebrates the marvels of the natural world: indeed I was out with two young relations who were staying with us last week and one of the things that most excited them was discovering fossils in a Cotswold stream not far from my home. I can’t wait to show them this gorgeous book and to share it much more widely.