Review by Booklist Review
The grade range given here is just for starters it's easy to imagine using the ideas in art classes all the way up through middle school, high school, and beyond. Ramstein and Arégui have created a humorous, intriguing, fascinating, insightful look at the concept of before and after, including the small (such as the acorn and oak) to the more complex (the building of a city). Ramstein's artwork has a fine-lined, almost Chris Ware-like sophistication, and the result will be readers, young and old, paging through the book multiple times, both for aha moments as well as hidden depths. Perhaps the richest possibility is an adult helping guide a child through the book, as some of the concepts take explaining for example, the squid on the left-hand page paired with the bottle of ink on the right-hand one. Quiet jokes abound, too: a chicken followed by an egg, and an egg followed by a chicken. Some will wish the items were sequenced in a logical fashion, while others will find the utter randomness part of the curious charm.--Petty, J. B. Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Starred Review. French artists Aregui and Ramstein don't just explore the idea of before and after in this wordless book-they pursue it with fervor. Crisply outlined digital images are tinted with muted pastels and splashed with warmer colors. Some are serious, others contain flashes of wit, and an air of scientific objectivity makes the humor even funnier. Many images are naturally suited to the theme-a caterpillar on the left becomes a butterfly on the right, and an acorn becomes an oak tree. A volcano that has erupted appears bare and lifeless; on the facing page, a dense jungle has grown up around it. A pile of ingredients becomes a cake; several pages later, the cake disappears, leaving a lonely slice on a crumb-filled plate. Other images are complex, surprising, and even puckish. The chicken-and-egg problem is addressed (though not solved), and a baby primate in that same volcanic jungle turns into a well-known ape, clinging to a skyscraper and swiping at airplanes. It's a fascinating examination of the work that time does, and it offers new possibilities-and smiles -every time it's read. Ages 4-8. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Horn Book Review
In this wordless book, before-and-after sequences appear on left and right sides of a spread or on subsequent spreads: night to day; acorn to oak tree. As the book progresses, some of the sequences become longer (sheep to wool to knitting to sweater) or reprise previously seen images as short time spans become longer and as simple transitions make way for more complex or philosophical ones. The oak tree from the acorn spread later illustrates the seasons; a seemingly straightforward transition from squid to ink and then bird feather to quill-in-an-inkwell morphs into a transition from inkwell to typewriter. The clean, subdued-palette digital illustrations make the connections crystal clear as identical objects are copied and recolored. While most of the sequences are either self-explanatory or philosophically provocative, some transitions, such as passenger pigeon to airmail letter, may require explanation from adults. Like many wordless books, this one is not meant to be shared in silence. The comments and conversations it provokes are at least half the fun. Just be prepared to answer a lot of questions. lolly robinson (c) Copyright 2015. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
This harmonious album of clean-lined, very simple images in before-and-after pairs or short sequences practically compels viewers to ruminate about changes and seasons. The book is entirely wordless, with just a few snatches of visual narrative in the form of multispread vignettes. Mirrored sun-moon pairs appear at the beginning and end, and a caterpillar seen chewing up a leaf on one spread flies off as a butterfly on the next, for instance. But this book is about many transformations, not just a few. In dozens of large, softly hued pictures of rolling landscapes or single trees, animals or manufactured objects against monochromatic backgrounds, the creators depict the passage of time. They do this through natural seasonal changes, with significant pairings like a rocking horse with a similarly curvilinear rocking chair or, taking a broader perspective, with opposing views of an urban skyline under construction and then finished. There are also allusive references, such as a pumpkin with a carriage. Human figures are raretiny when they do appear. Younger children will enjoy the mild challenge of figuring out the connections between, for instance, a slingshot and a broken window, a homing pigeon and an airmail envelope, a woolly sheep and (several steps and a knitted winter hat later) wood smoke drifting from a chimney in the snow. Peaceful, sometimes mildly humorous art provides gentle nudging toward a philosophical frame of mind. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
