Lines, Squiggles, Letters, Words

Matoso’s striking, poster like illustrations use a limited palette of, mostly, red, pink, blue, black, and olive, allowing figures and patterns to occasionally merge with negative space, visually reinforcing the mental gymnastics involved in deciphering letters, her awareness of environmental print as keen as Pedro’s. This will have many children looking for meaning all around them.

A boy named Pedro gradually learns how to read, gaining a new understanding of once-indecipherable images on street signs and buildings. Matoso's blocky graphics underscore themes of sight and learning on multiple fronts: the palette (vermilion, blue, and pea-soup green) echoes the RGB color model, and the illegible scribbles Pedro sees on milk cartons, buses, and elsewhere slowly shift into recognizable characters after he learns about letters like A and D at school. In so doing, Matoso lets readers share in Pedro's disorientation, perhaps never more than when Pedro's father tells him that "through your letters you're starting to understand more of what you see." The text of the scene is set against a dizzying backdrop of overlapping red and green stripes; taking a moment to think about what they are seeing (as Pedro often does), readers will realize it's a close-up of Pedro's father's sweater. It's a smart, thoughtful chronicle of learning in action, and it would pair well with Sergio's Ruzzier's recent This Is Not a Picture Book! for discussions about how literacy transforms the unfamiliar into the known. Ages 3-6. (Nov.)

Young Pedro wonders about the lines and squiggles that he sees on signs, billboards, and stores. What do they mean? He doesn't understand until he starts school, where he learns the letter A and suddenly sees the letter everywhere! The same happens with the letter D. Are all the books, signs, and packages being secretly painted with the letters Pedro studies? Nope! As his father says, "Through your letters you're starting to understand more of what you see." Soon Pedro recognizes the words all around him, finding joy in his ability to read. High contrast between shapes and colors in a slightly muted palette of mostly red, blue, green, black, and white illustrate this charming story, translated from Portuguese, about a child's excitement at learning to decipher the words that surround him. Blocky, expressionistic pictures capture the bustle of a city, while the use of horizontal and vertical lines encourages the concentration and close observation young ones need to master letters and numbers. The interplay between Pedro's newfound letter knowledge and his blossoming understanding of lines and squiggles around his city makes for a fun story that may encourage young readers to take notice of the letters in their lives. VERDICT An engaging, creative look at literacy that's great for prereaders.—Kelsey Johnson-Kaiser, St. Paul Public Library