![]() ![]() A sweet lamb soon invites Kikko in, and there she meets a pack of wild animals, all polite as can be and interested in her. Upon closer inspection, the man inside isn’t a man at all but a bear. He enters a house she’s never seen before. Catching up, there’s something strange about her father. She knows the way but when she spots him in the distance she smashes the pie in her excitement. When he forgets to bring along the pie Kikko’s mother baked for the occasion, Kikko takes off after him. Having snowed all night, Kikko’s father takes off through the woods to shovel out the walk of her grandmother. In this strangeness we find a magnificent book. We are in safe hands from the start to the finish but there’s no moment when you relax entirely. Upon further consideration, however, it is walking the tightrope between fear and comfort. It looks on first glance like what one might characterize to be a “quiet” book. That they will remain perfect little evocative pieces that seep deep into the softer linings of a child’s brain, changing them, affecting them, and remaining there for decades in some form. And some of the time you know, deep in your heart of hearts, that they will never see the silver screen. Some of the time they’re adapted into them (as with The Snowman or The Lost Thing or Lost and Found) and sometimes they’re made in tandem ( The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore). There are picture books out there that feel like short films. ![]()
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