Opposites

by Keith Kimberlin

This board book uses puppies to demonstrate opposites. It does a good job with some of them- light and dark colors, groups of few and many, and the front and back on the covers are especially cute. A lot of the other pages kinda bug me, however, because they just don't seem to illustrated the concepts well. I will tell you of them.

The fast puppy is sitting on a scooter, looks like he's going for a ride- my toddler gets a kick out of this. But the slow puppy next to him isn't moving at all, just sitting there. Wouldn't it be better if he was at least walking?

The short and tall spread shows a little chihuahua next to a german shepherd- but the shepherd is pictured so large his lower legs and feet are off the page, and he's sitting. It looks almost exactly like the big and small spread, just with different dogs. I imagine it would have worked better to show a dog with short legs- like a dachshund or basset- next to a dog with very long legs, like a greyhound. And both standing up.

The in and out page shows a puppy in a box, then the same puppy just sitting on the bare ground. I think the concept would be stronger if the box was shown in the second picture. The awake and asleep spread show a fat little puppy sleeping in a chair on the beach, and then a different pup just looking at you. I think showing the same pup in the awake picture would make it stronger. Incidentally, the sleeping pup is a pinkish wrinkled shar pei, and my daughter seems to think he looks like a pig. She always says "oink" or "piggie"!

So that's me being very critical, just because I kept picturing how these pages could have been done better. But it doesn't really matter; my kid loves this book because it's full of cute puppies!

Rating: 2/5 ........ 22 pages, 2006