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Key Bookshelf Title: Help! There is an old saying that goes like this: “Do not believe everything you hear.” Sometimes people say things that are not true. They say them as if they know what they are talking about when they do not. That is why it is important to check facts when we hear something that does not match what we think we know. When people talk about each other this way, it is called gossip. Gossip is the subject of Holly Keller’s new book. Mouse and Snake have always been friends. So Hedgehog is very surprised to find Mouse trying to hide from their friend Snake. “Fox told Skunk and Skunk told me that snakes are very dangerous to mice,” Mouse tells Hedgehog. Hedgehog tries to reassure (“re-a-shoor”) Mouse that Snake would never hurt him. He makes Mouse walk out in the open with him. But Mouse is afraid. He is so afraid that he cannot pay attention to where he is walking. He falls down a hole and gets hurt. He cannot get out by himself. Hedgehog cannot help him out. Squirrel cannot help him out. Rabbit cannot help either. Snake can. But how can Snake get Mouse out without scaring him? Holly Keller has written many wonderful books for children. Her pictures are always wonderful. But she has done something different this time. Most of her books have drawings and paintings. This time she used something called collographs (“cah-lo-grafs”). Collographs are printed collages (“cah-lahjes”). To make them, she pasted cut paper, cardboard and other things onto a bigger piece of cardboard. Then she printed them with a special press and painted them with watercolor paints. Snake’s body is an onion bag. Squirrel is made of cupcake pan liners. Mouse looks like he is made from a strawberry slice. Children will love this easy-to-read book. They will learn an important lesson about friendship. They will also have a lot of fun trying to guess what Keller used to make her collographs. |