Anything Is Possible

Sophisticated yet nicely in balance with the brief text, Trevisan’s art includes patterns that suggest fabric collage, along with blocks of mathematical notation used as decoration on the endpapers and in the sweep of the hill from which the pair takes off. Lovely bookmaking nicely complements this charming, light-as-a-feather tale of friendship and successful dreaming.

A dreamer of a sheep wants to build a flying machine to get a bird's-eye view of the world. "They can choose how they look at things: from far away, from up close, or from somewhere in between," she thinks. Her friend, a wolf, is skeptical ("You spend too much time watching the birds in the sky"), but he can't resist the sheep's can-do attitude, even after two initial prototypes fail in major ways. Trevisan pictures their collaboration in spare, editorial-style collaged images on crisp white space; much of the fun comes from seeing the contrast between the streamlined wolf and sheep and other visual elements made from elaborately decorated paper (the long tail of their first contraption is densely scribbled with mathematical equations). Even the cropping of the images is witty and stylish: one spread conveys a crash by showing bits of the two passengers, a wheel, and a wing falling beyond the pages' margins. Unfortunately, the minimal text is literal and leaden, so while the message about persistence comes through, readers get little insight into the nature of this improbable friendship. Ages 4-7. (Aug.)

PreS-Gr 2--This short, slight tale promotes the concepts of teamwork and perseverance. When Sheep sees a flock of birds flying overhead, she wishes she could join them. She gets an idea, runs to see Wolf, and asks him to work with her on building a flying machine. He's skeptical at first, but eventually Sheep prevails. Their first design has fabric wings that rip mid flight, sending them tumbling to the ground. They try balloons, but the birds pop them. Sheep's last idea has her fashioning a dragon's head, while Wolf cuts out a tail. This time the plan works, and off they fly together. The mixed-media illustrations are abstract and creative; they use paper cutouts, ink, and pencil. Unfortunately, there is not much of a plot here. In addition, Sheep and Wolf's final design presumably works because the cutout dragon scares away the birds, but that is not totally clear from the pictures.--Roxanne Burg, Orange County Public Library, CA