In this book Calef Brown’s colors are so bright and his scenes are so playful- I can’t imagine a happier book. It’s a “guided tour” of Tippentown lead by a blue sort of elephant man who narrates the scenes. (You get the extra bonus game of trying to find him amongst the crowd of wacky characters because he shows up on every page somewhere.) Calef has the amazing ability to be graphic with his illustrations while still keeping that painterly look. The architecture is full of colorful patterns and his backgrounds are made of thick strokes of variations of the same color. His people characters wear funny hats and sunglasses and maybe some striped bell bottoms. They also have a real variety of hairstyles- pointy ones, suave ones, curly clumps or patterned waves. The whole book is rhyming too- how much more fun can a kid have with a book. Calef has been a favorite of mine ever since he came to my class to give a little talk about his work back in say 2001 when I was a junior. Since then I’ve followed his work in the pages of Rolling Stone, NY Times, Harper’s and projects he’s worked on for Adidas, Target and MTV. But his children’s books are my favorite because each one is full to the edge with his joyful drawings. You can get a copy of this book right here and check out a ton of his work on his site here (I’m also really fond of his portraits-check them out)

© Julia Rothman 2007