  | Full Text Reviews: Booklist - 07/01/2013 A black mouse with a ball of orange yarn illustrates the relativity of concepts such as big and little. Each double-page spread carries a single short question, such as Is it deep? / or shallow? or Is it light? / or heavy? and each pair of spreads shows two contrasting views of the same object. The ball of yarn that seems big next to the mouse looks comparatively little when the cat steps over it. The mouse wades up to his middle in a deep puddle that is shallow to the cat. Beautifully designed, the book features simple, dramatic illustrations in black, grays, and burnt orange on white backgrounds. Created without shading, the forms are clean and eye-catching. While the short questions are the only text, a lively narrative unfolds in the pictures, where the scary cat, after encountering a fierce-looking dog, becomes scared. The mouse’s tale comes to the end, but for the cat’s tale, Is it the beginning? A clever play on opposites and their relative meanings. - Copyright 2013 Booklist. School Library Journal - 10/01/2013 Pres-Gr 1—This extremely simple book explains how the meanings of even very basic words can differ, depending on the perspective of the observer. For example, the first spread features a small black mouse gazing up at what is to him a large red ball of yarn (easily mistaken for a balloon, as it has no texture). He asks, "Is it big?" The following spread shows a black cat much larger than the yarn ball preparing to pounce on the mouse asking, "Or is it little?" Other illustrations deal with deep/shallow, light/heavy, long/short, scary/scared, and end/beginning. The artwork features clean white space, simple lines, and a palette of black, gray, and red. However, the colors are flat, with no value or shading-not much to engage the eye. There are some humorous touches but, while the point is made, there is not enough here to encourage repeated readings, even for the youngest audience, rendering this a marginal purchase.—Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ - Copyright 2013 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Loading...
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