Chronicle Books, 2010
$15.99, all ages, 44 pages.
A shadow puppet with sharp, jagged teeth comes to life and chases a little girl across the fold of this magical wordless book.
But will the girl and her make-believe playmates be clever enough to scare him away?
As with Lee's breathtaking wordless book Wave, in which a girl teases a wave to try to splash her, Shadow tells the story of a girl lost in play.
But instead of playing with a wave, the girl dances around an attic with shadows that look like happy jungle friends, with one scary exception.
While playing in the attic, she's also imagines a shadow of a big, bad wolf and if she's not careful, he might just gobble her up.
As the story begins, the girl has slipped up to the attic alone before dinner. With the pull of a light string, she turns on an overhead bulb that casts everything in the room into shadow.
On the left side you see the girl standing beside a ladder holding boots and a hose, piled-up boxes, a vacuum with a long suction hose, and a bicycle hung upside down from hooks.
Across the gutter on the right, you see all of their shadows, and for now, the shapes only suggest what they've been cast from. But as the story evolves, the shadows will shift into things the girl imagines she sees.
At first, the girl is enamored with her own shadow and with making it move. She sails around the attic with her arms angled like plane wings and watches her shadow fly with her.
Then, on the next spread, she begins manipulating her shadow. Freeing her hands from an apple she's been munching on, she hooks them together like bird wings.
As she flaps her hands, curiosity gives way to exhilaration, and in one joyous sweep of her arms she sets her shadow puppet free.
Across the fold, the shadow of a dovelike bird takes flight in a cloud of speckled yellow li
5 Comments on Shadow, last added: 11/8/2010
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westminster elementry go!!!!
a vote for westminster elem
Vote for Colfax!
Vote for Westgate.
Vote for Westgate!