There's No Such Thing as Little

Reviewed by: Jill O'Connor - North Yarmouth Academy, Yarmouth, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: December 9, 2015

Review

Pham strikes again with her brightly-rendered, round-headed, big-eyed illustrations, this time of children instead of animals (see "Another Piece of Cake" from the Cream of the Crop list 2014). This book celebrates all of the things that children can do, which is quite a lot. With die-cut holes to peek through to the next page, Pham shows one little thing, or does she? Each little thing is actually part of a larger thing, thereby stretching the reader's perceptions of "little". The point of the book is that a child is considered little, but a child can do many things and little shouldn't mean that the child can't contribute in a big way to the world. Some of Pham's little-to-big conversions are brilliant: "A little letter? No, an important letter" about the letter "i" which she illustrates with pages from books containing this necessary letter. And "A little line? No, an inspiring line" which she illustrates with great works of art. Kids will love the idea of being given more weight and importance and librarians and teachers will love the diversity of children on some of the pages, and the fun of reading this book out loud and having the children guess what is the not-so-little thing on the next page. Highly recommend.

Overall Book Score: excellent