- Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett and illustrations by Jon Klassen (Balzert + Bray, unpaged) $19
IF you want something done and done well, just get cracking and do it yourself.
This is a maxim most of us learned at our mother's knee. Annabelle discovers this for herself in the picture book Extra Yarn when she finds a box filled with wool of every colour and embarks on what becomes a knitting odyssey.
She begins by knitting a sweater for herself and discovers she has yarn left over. Mars the dog receives a sweater, causing a young observer to make a mocking comment about how silly the two of them look. Annabelle tells him he is jealous and makes him a sweater too.
The knitting gets entirely out of control as Annabelle creates sweaters for her schoolmates, the teacher and all her family and friends. The yarn supply is apparently endless and after making sweaters for the local pets and wild animals, she begins to make covers for mailboxes, bird houses and finally every house in her town.
Her fame spreads, bringing an archduke who attempts to purchase the amazing box of yarn. When he is turned down, he hires robbers to break into her house and steal the box, which turns out to be empty. He tries to put a curse on Annabelle and assures her that she will never be happy again but it turns out not to be the case.
Annabelle's casual matter-of-fact acceptance of the magical box of yarn is amusing as is the fact that she is right most of the time and others are not.
In fact, she is cool as a cucumber in all situations including the meeting with the threatening archduke. The story emphasizes this several times with the comment, "It turns out she could" or "It turns out she was" in response to various claims that she is not going to be able to perform tasks or escape the archduke's curse.
The deadpan humour in the text is perfectly complemented by the spare, quirky illustrations of Jon Klassen of I Want my Hat Back fame.
The idea that sharing and generosity are more admirable character traits than greed and nastiness is deftly handled.
As the endpapers proclaim, "This looks like an ordinary box of yarn." But it turns out it isn't. And neither is this dry, whimsical and totally offbeat book!
For more picture books featuring interesting, clever, resourceful or crafty females try the following titles:
- Brave Irene by William Steig
- The Daddy Mountain by Jules Feiffer
- Eloise series by Kay Thompson
- Finn MacCoul and his Fearless Wife retold and illustrated by Robert
Byrd ? The Little Red Hen Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney
- Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans - Olivia Pig series by Ian Falconer
- The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
- Singing Away the Dark by Hendrika C. Woodward
- Stella, Princess of the Sky by Marie-Louise Gay.
Fran Ashdown is the children's librarian at the Capilano Branch of the North Vancouver District Library. She regrets that she has never learned to knit but she can crochet. For more library information, check out www.nvdpl.ca.
