After the gorgeous My Animals comes My Circus. It's a minimalist board book, looking at clowns, acrobats and elephants. It oozes style from every pore, with its fake black suede cover, its black, white and red illustrations, and its clever use of holes in the pages. A zebra's stripes on one page become an juggler's stripy trousers on another, and so on.
| My Circus by Xavier Deneux | |
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| Category: For Sharing | |
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Reviewer: Keith Dudhnath
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| Summary: An utterly gorgeous board book that everyone will love to pore over, from the very youngest right on up. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 24 | Date: April 2010 |
| Publisher: Bloomsbury | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1408807002 | |
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My Circus, just like My Animals before it, is one of those books that's aesthetically delightful. It grabs your attention the moment you see it, and it'll immediately have everyone oohing and ahhing over it. Its content more than lives up to the promise of the book as an object. Such is its quality that it will be enjoyed by the very youngest children (its prime audience), right through to those learning to read for themselves. Every adult who sees it will say "Ooh, what a beautiful book." Betcha.
I could never grow tired of Xavier Deneux's illustrations. Their minimalism is perfectly crafted, rather than being basic for basic's sake. Each page just has one word, and a picture of that thing. It takes an awful lot of skill to make something so simple so wonderful. My Circus might not offer anything new over and above My Animals, but it's an absolute joy to read. I'm sure any further follow-ups will be equally wonderful, and I can't wait to see them. Highly recommended.
My thanks to the publishers for sending it to Bookbag.
If you're after another beautiful book, check out Abc 3d by Marion Bataille and Not A Box by Antoinette Portis. For circus-based fun, you'll enjoy The Circus Ship by Chris Van Dusen.
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You can read more book reviews or buy My Circus by Xavier Deneux at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy My Circus by Xavier Deneux at Amazon.com.
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