Simply Stunning

Those are the only two words that can describe Jerry Pinkney's The Lion and the Mouse.  This is a wordless adaptation of the classic Aesop fable and the illustrations are beyond description.  There is so much detail, emotion, heart, and humor on each page.  It's as if this is what the fable really is supposed to portray when it isn't limited by words.

Eva didn't quite believe that there could be a story with no words but she ended up loving it.  She loves to do art projects so I am hoping this book will be an inspiration for her to start making stories out of her pictures.  Each page in this book is completely captivating, it's almost as if an entire story is portrayed on each page.  And it is easy to get the story through the pictures, Eva gasped at all the right places and made predictions and clearly showed that she was tracking the story even though there weren't any words.

At the end of the book she said, "I think that those were the best pictures."  I might have to agree with Eva. Pinkney used colored pencil, watercolor and pencil to craft these illustrations and I think that is what makes it so stunning. I have all of those materials.  I have drawn and painted with all of those things but I was never able to create anything close to what Pinkney has created here.  These illustrations are works of art fit to be framed and displayed.

Reading the pictures...that's kids stuff.