Extra yarn

Mac Barnett

Book - 2011

With a supply of yarn that never runs out, Annabelle knits for everyone and everything in town until an evil archduke decides he wants the yarn for himself.

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Children's Room jE/Barnett Due Apr 3, 2024
Children's Room jE/Barnett Due Mar 31, 2024
Subjects
Genres
Picture books
Published
New York : Balzer & Bray c2011.
Language
English
Main Author
Mac Barnett (-)
Edition
1st ed
Physical Description
unpaged : ill
ISBN
9780061953385
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

LAST fall, an advertisement in the children's book review journal The Horn Book announced, "We are tired of hearing the picture book is in trouble, and tired of pretending it is not." Signed by 22 writers and illustrators, the proclamation offered an attractive vision for children's literature, including declarations that "a picture book should be fresh, honest, piquant and beautiful," and that "we must cease writing the same book again and again." The Picture Book Manifesto, as the treatise is known, was the brainchild of the author Mac Barnett ("Mustache!"). "I think there's a lot of hand-wringing going on now about the picture book and its place in the market and in our culture," Barnett told Publishers Weekly. "We need to make exciting books that kids will want to read." Those who agree will rejoice in the release of three new picture books by well-established authors and illustrators that attempt to answer that call, including one by Barnett himself. Many memorable picture books rely on the imaginations of both their characters and their readers to transform the ordinary into the remarkable. Continuing that tradition, in each of these titles - "One Cool Friend," written by Toni Buzzeo (known for her "Adventure Annie" books) and illustrated by the Caldecott winner David Small ("Imogene's Antlers" "So You Want to Be President?"); "The Monster Returns," written and illustrated by Peter McCarty ("Henry in Love," "Hondo & Fabian"); and "Extra Yarn," written by Barnett and illustrated by Jon Klassen ("I Want My Hat Back"), another manifesto signer - the child protagonist demonstrates creativity and resourcefulness that will inspire readers. In the wonderful "One Cool Friend," prim and polite Elliot, who prefers books to "masses of noisy kids," is captivated by penguins during a trip to the aquarium and decides to bring one home in his backpack. Elliot proceeds to turn his room into an ice-skating rink, make a nest in the freezer, and invest in ice cubes and Goldfish crackers to keep his new friend happy. Our hero looks like a penguin himself, sporting a tuxedo and enviable posture, while his father, hunched and in green pajamas, resembles the sea turtles he spends his days researching. Academic curiosity is encouraged in Elliot's home. Naming his penguin Magellan, Elliot bikes to the library to learn more about the breed. Small's energetic colored-pencil;, ink and watercolor illustrations aptly convey the scale and urgency of a child's perspective and provide plenty of playful details leading up to a last-page twist that will delight kids and parents alike. "The Monster Returns" is a welcome stand-alone follow-up to Peter McCarty's "Jeremy Draws a Monster," from 2009. In the first book, reclusive, artistic Jeremy animates a cheerful monster whose incessant demands for hand-drawn entertainment prove exhausting. Eventually, Jeremy draws his monster a one-way bus ticket and sends him on his way. In this sequel, the monster is back, telephoning to announce that he's bored. Jeremy enlists help from the neighborhood children, giving them his "fancy pens" to color more monsters who will keep his original creation happy. Several pages are devoted to revealing these new beasts, and children will enjoy spying the similarities between the monsters and their illustrators. This time, Jeremy uses his imagination to include others, not merely to escape his own loneliness. "Friends for me?" Jeremy's surprised monster asks. "Friends for you and for me," Jeremy says. McCarty's whimsical and wiggly sketches cover the endpapers, which show children and monsters all together, providing an opportunity for young readers to contextualize the story and describe what they see as Jeremy enjoys friendship's rewards. "The Monster Returns" feels less complete than its predecessor, but those who loved Jeremy the first time around will be happy to see him back, with several new monsters to boot. Annabelle, the dexterous heroine of Barnett and Klassen's "Extra Yarn," inhabits a monochrome world of grays and browns until she finds a box of brightly colored yarn in the snow. When the rambow sweater she knits herself is a distraction at her humdrum school, she promises to knit sweaters for the whole class. "Impossible," her teacher says. "You can't." But Annabelle does, and the magical box of yarn just won't run out, even after she knits sweaters for everyone in town, and then for the local animals and buildings. Klassen's illustrations are the most absorbing part of this tale, wrapping Annabelle's sooty, snowy town in mottled color and texture as her knitting progresses. Klassen is known for his concept art for the animated movie "Coraline," and he carries a bit of that film's otherworldliness into bis work here. Alas, the story's central conflict - the interference of a greedy archduke who appears out of nowhere to demand the yarn for himself - feels out of place, as the theme of creativity trumping negativity was already pleasing on its own. The second act also raises more questions than it answers. For example, it's unclear why the archduke wants the yarn. Woven through is a rather grown-up hipster aesthetic, with guerrilla knitting around tree branches and bearded characters who wouldn't look out of place at a Portland indie-rock show. Think of it as Etsy for the grade-school set, well suited to Klassen's moody illustrations and Barnett's emphasis on the felicitous extraordinary. In both "The Monster Returns" and "Extra Yarn," it's largely the characters' creations that burst into color - the drawings by Jeremy and his friends and Annabelle's knitting transform their otherwise dreary homes. All three books are also notable for the beneficent absence of hands-on parenting - Elliot's father reads National Geographic while Elliot explores the aquarium, and we never even meet Jeremy's parents - making space for the child protagonists to flourish creatively. "It is right that anything a child sees, feels, or thinks be our grist," Barnett's picture book manifesto commendably insists, and the resourceful children in these three books will certainly motivate young readers to extend the stories in their own imaginations as they read and reread them. Parents, keep some fancy pens and balls of yarn on hand, and don't forget to check your children's backpacks after field trips to the aquarium. Rachael Brown, a former teacher, has written for The Atlantic and The Guardian.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 5, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* This understated picture book is certain to spark the imagination of every child who comes upon it, and what could be better than that? Annabelle lives in a black-and-white world, where everything is drab, drab, drab. So imagine her surprise when she finds a box filled with yarn of every color. Armed with the yarn and knitting needles, she makes herself a sweater, but after she finishes, she finds that she has extra yarn left over. After knitting a sweater for her dog, her classmates, and various (hilariously unsurprised) bunnies and bears, she still has extra yarn. So, Annabelle turns her attention to things that don't usually wear wool cozies: houses and cars and mailboxes. Soon an evil archduke with a sinister mustache who was very fond of clothes hears about the magic box of never-ending yarn, and he wants it for his own. Reading like a droll fairy tale, this Barnett-Klassen collaboration is both seamless and magical. The spare, elegant text and art are also infused with plenty of deadpan humor. Klassen (I Want My Hat Back, 2011) uses ink, gouache, and digital illustration to fashion Annabelle's world out of geometric shapes, set against dark, saturated pages, and against white as the town comes to colorful, stitched life. Quirky and wonderful, this story quietly celebrates a child's ingenuity and her ability to change the world around her.--Kelley, Ann Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Understated illustrations and prose seamlessly construct an enchanting and mysterious tale about a girl named Annabelle, who lives in a world "where everywhere you looked was either the white of snow or the black of soot from chimneys." After Annabelle finds a box filled with yarn of every color, she immediately sets out to knit sweaters for everyone she knows. Barnett's (Mustache!) story is both fairy tale lean and slyly witty. No matter how many sweaters Annabelle knits, the box always has "extra yarn" for another project, until the entire town is covered with angled stitches in muted, variegated colors-people, animals, and buildings alike. (Fans of Klassen's I Want My Hat Back may suspect that a few of the animals from that story have wandered into this one.) A villainous archduke offers to buy the box, but Annabelle refuses. He steals it, but finds it contains no yarn at all, and with the help of just a bit more magic, it finds its way back to Annabelle. Barnett wisely leaves the box's magic a mystery, keeping the focus on Annabelle's creativity, generosity, and determination. Ages 4-8. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review

K-Gr 3-In a snow- and soot-covered town, Annabelle discovers a small black box filled with colorful yarn. She knits a sweater for herself, but there's still yarn left over. From the seemingly inexhaustible supply, she knits sweaters for her dog, a boy and his dog, her classmates, her mean teacher, her parents, and people in town. In an astounding feat of urban knitting, she covers the buildings in sweatery goodness, but the yarn does not run out. Disaster strikes when a mustachioed, piratical archduke arrives, demanding that the child sell him the magic box. When she declines, he steals it but does not benefit from his crime, as he finds it empty. In a fit of rage, the archduke curses Annabelle and flings the box into the sea. Happily, it finds its way back to her full of yarn again. Klassen's deadpan, stylized illustrations impeccably complement Barnett's quirky droll writing. Small details like a dog's sneer or sweater-covered mailboxes add to the subtle humor. The cheerful colors of the yarn contrast with the somber grays and blacks of the town. Give this one to fans of offbeat stories like Florence Heide's Princess Hyacinth: (The Surprising Story of a Girl Who Floated) (Random, 2009) or to young knitting enthusiasts.-Yelena Alekseyeva-Popova, Chappaqua Library, NY (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review

When young Annabelle (see p. 5) finds a small box containing yarn of every color, she does what any self-respecting knitter would do: she knits herself a sweater. Then she knits a sweater for her dog. Improbably, there's yarn left over, so she knits colorful garments for everyone in her snowy, sooty, colorless town. Even Mr. Crabtree, "who never wore sweaters or even long pants, and who would stand in his shorts with the snow up to his knees," receives a hand-knit gift: a hat with a pompom. Houses and buildings, too, are soon covered in natty sweaters, and fans of illustrator Klassen will smile to see critters strongly resembling the bear and rabbit from I Want My Hat Back (rev. 11/11) clad in variegated yarn cozies. When Annabelle, ever content to click-click away, refuses an archduke's offer of millions for the box and its never-ending yarn, he steals it. Turns out the magic lies elsewhere (perhaps in the hands and heart of a little girl?), and all is made right. Klassen's brown ink and digitally created illustrations pair nicely with the translucent, lightly inked knitwear. His pacing, especially the mostly wordless sequence when the box floats back to Annabelle on a triangle of an iceberg, is impeccable. The final spread, all light and yarn-covered tree limbs, brings Barnett's clever, quiet yarn full circle, to a little girl and a town, now colorful and happy. robin l. smith From HORN BOOK, Copyright The Horn Book, used with permission.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Coraline, uses inks, gouache and colorized scans of a sweater to create a stylized, linear design of dark geometric shapes against a white background. The stitches of the sweaters add a subdued rainbow. Barnett entertained middle-grade readers with his Brixton Brothers detective series. Here, he maintains a folkloric narrative that results in a traditional story arc complete with repetition, drama and a satisfying conclusion. A quiet story of sharing with no strings attached. (Picture book. 4-7)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.