Horn Book Review
Lively art and text come together with clever design to make this ode to books and reading a delight to open and pore over. Each page turn reveals the cover of a smaller book of a different color with the tantalizing beginnings of a snowballing story on its flipside: "Open thisLittle Red Book [page turn] and read about a Ladybug, who opens aLittle Green Book." As the "books" and pages get smaller, the animals we read about get larger, from ladybug to frog to rabbit to bear to giant. The giant, who is so large that readers can only see her blue fingers, brings this tension of sizes to a halt. Too big to open her very tiny book, she must rely on her animal friends to help get to the story inside. From then on, each page turn closes one of the books until the end reveals a full-size picture of a colorful tree house bursting with books and readers coaxing us all to "open another!" Art done with pencil and watercolor and manipulated digitally uses plenty of white space and bright colors to create a clean layout, allowing the tiny details to pop from this special package. julie roach (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
You really can't judge a book by its cover! Follow the instructions of the title and find...another, smaller cover, in purple, with a frog and a rabbit both engrossed in their reading. Open that cover, and there's a red one (with black dots) about a ladybug, then a green one about a frog, an orange one about a rabbit, a yellow (with honeycombs) about a bear, each progressively smaller, and finally, a tiny blue one, which really contains a story. It's about a giant, the ladybug, the rabbit, the frog and the bear, dedicated readers all, who form a friendship based on their love of reading. Meantime, the outer edges of the books that were opened on the way form a pretty, square rainbow. (Each cover features a different typeface and background design.) Getting to the end of the story means passing back through all the previous page sizes and colors. On the final red page, the ladybug closes her book, and then "[y]ou close this little red book." But of course, then readers are urged to "open another!" And the illustration on the real last page features a tall bookcase with all the animals around it reading, as well as the giant's hand, other tiny creatures and a couple of engrossed children. The sleek text and endlessly inventive design register strongly by showing rather than just telling. A delightful and timely homage to reading and, more, to books themselves. (Picture book. 3-8)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
