Review by Booklist Review
Coelho offers 20 tales--each 10 words long and occupying one double-page spread--interpreted by various artists. The tales range from eerie ("'Invite me in,' she says outside my tenth storey window") to whimsical ("I hear the patter of tiny feet underneath my bed") to macabre ("Every year they honoured their son by decorating his skull"). The artwork is wide-ranging in both style and mood: Freya Hartas' friendly robots remove their batteries and frolic in the forest; Thea Lu's broken-armed man carries X-rays that reveal his upcoming death date; and Yoko Tanaka's bear takes possession of a rusty snowmobile, seemingly abandoned on another planet. Each tale is thought-provoking and guaranteed to elicit questions and debate. An afterword encourages readers to illustrate and expand a tiny tale, offering additional prompts and questions to help would-be writers tap into their creativity. Reminiscent of Chris Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdock and Shaun Tan's Tales from Outer Suburbia (2009), this will engage sophisticated readers and be welcomed by creative writing classes.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Laughter, puzzlement, shivers--10-word morsels from U.K. children's laureate Coelho, each illustrated by contemporary artists including Raissa Figueroa, Júlia Sardà, and Shaun Tan, evoke a startling panoply of thoughts and feelings. In a collaborate work that recalls The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, some brief stories make dark jokes or suggest grim outcomes ("The Venus flytrap keeps edging closer/ to Grandma's favorite chair"), while others deliver shots of straight horror ("The thing that slumps/ from the egg has my eyes") or hint at adventure ("The bear turns the ignition/ on the snowmobile./ It works!"). Various artist contributors take different tacks in visualizing the lines, many developing the concepts. Alongside "My splintered oars are lost/ as my boat speeds onward," Alex T. Smith imagines three brown-skinned human figures in a pink-hued galaxy, pursued by a shark-shaped steampunk battleship threatening to swallow them all. Thea Lu, meanwhile, adds a sinister seasonality to the pale-skinned figure attending "the X-rays reveal/ writing etched onto/ all of my bones." Front and back matter detail the book's beginnings and suggest using the tales as writing prompts, inviting readers to expand, create, and let their pens and imaginations soar. Ages 7--10. (Sept.)
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Review by Horn Book Review
Illustrated by twenty-one accomplished artists from around the globe, each of the twenty "tiny tales" gives the reader just enough in word and picture to generate curiosity and discussion. Thea Lu illustrates the prompt "the x-rays reveal writing etched onto all of my bones" with an image of someone carrying an x-ray and holding a casted arm in a sling. Look closely at the x-ray to see that each bone is shown with an expiration date. Does that January 14, 2030, date signify the person's death? Shaun Tan's beautifully creepy painting centers an enormous human skull, sitting in a farmyard. A ladder leans against the skull, and a relatively diminutive human, on hands and knees, paints adornments on it: "Every year they honored their son by decorating his skull." Why is the skull so much larger than the humans? Do the window curtains suggest that the people live inside? Do the decorations mean anything? What happened? Coelho's extensive afterword suggests ways for young writers and artists to build on the stories. Like Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, this is a book for older children to pore over and let their imaginations flower. With twenty-one different illustrators representing many styles, media, and settings, each of the spreads stands apart so viewers can concentrate on a single page or read the book through for a disquieting experience. Maeve Visser KnothNovember/December 2023 p.54 (c) Copyright 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
A global roster of 21 distinguished illustrators contributes imagery for Coelho's cryptic 10-word stories. Invoking multiple dimensions in his notes to readers and the tales themselves, Coelho invites illustrators to consider interplanetary space, undersea caverns, and realms between. The interplay of words and resulting double-page spreads--at turns, inexplicable, sweet, or sinister--evokes the work of Edward Gorey and Chris Van Allsburg. The artists bring uniquely varied styles to the project, from Flavia Z. Drago's Charles Addams--meets-Magritte dining table to Dapo Adeola's cartoonish depiction of an encounter between a hamster and demonlike creatures. Nahid Kazemi captures a serene moment before mayhem in a slumbering elder's cozy, plant-filled room as "the Venus flytrap keeps edging closer to Grandma's favorite chair." Some artists play with scale to charming or unsettling effect. For "I hear the patter of tiny feet underneath my bed," Maja Kastelic pictures a mouse in a matchbox bed, a multiplicity of underground insect domiciles below. And the inimitable Shaun Tan reveals a family decorating a departed son's skull--as big as a house. Often, tales and their paired images carry their own discrete surrealism, combining for spreads sure to puzzle and spark readers' imaginations. To this end, Coelho offers several writing and drawing prompts, challenging kids to extend the tales with "new beginnings, endings and middles." Humans depicted are diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.) Twisty, playful fun. (Picture book. 7-10) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
