Quote of the Month

When love and skill work together, expect a miracle. John Ruskin




Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Crack-up Crocs and Friendship

Pam Smallcomb definitely knows what friendship and that age old phrase "opposites attract" are all about.   Robert Weinstock knows just how to bring what Smallcomb knows leaping to life with his quirky pictures which by the way were not rendered in watercolor or woodcut...but were super fun to make anyway!

To start the cover says it all as does the first line in the book:  Sometimes I wonder if my friend Evelyn is from Mars.  A little brown crocodile ponders what her friend Evelyn is followed by I'm not.  Concise text complimented with drawings that extend and enhance your imagination of this relationship will have readers eargerly searching pages for all the little extra details and begging for the next page to be turned. 

One of the most hilarious examples is how she relates that Evelyn is very hip with fashion but alas she is not.  Lampshades are the new black!  Band-Aids with pearls...trust me!  Sweatbands are making a comeback! 

Then Evelyn admits as they are sitting by a tree that she is stinky at spelling.  But lo and behold her little brown croc pal says, I'm not.
The switch begins as Evelyn's friend's talents are highlighted.  Evelyn goes on to say that universal truth; all we want is a best friend, a true-blue friend. 

It is no mistake that the book's endpapers begin as green and close as blue or that the back cover illustrates Evelyn is 46 flavors.  I'm not.  Smallcomb and Weinstock want readers to know that just because you are not gifted as someone else is, you have your own gifts, sometimes the gift of being a best friend.  It doesn't get much better than that.

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