The Tiny Wish

November 1, 2014
A little girl named Anja has another Scandinavian-themed adventure in this story illustrated with supersized photographs, a companion to The Christmas Wish (2013).This time the story has a summertime setting, with Anja visiting her cousins at their remote mountain farm. The three children explore the countryside, playing with goats and riding together on the family's huge horse. During a game of hide-and-seek, Anja wishes she were small enough to hide even more successfully from everyone, and her wish is mysteriously granted. She shrinks down to just a few inches, flying off on the back of a friendly finch to experience her new size in relation to other settings and animals. She uses a pine cone as a sled, makes a birch-bark boat with a squirrel and rides home astride a helpful rabbit. The high-quality digitally composed photographs draw readers in with sweeping mountain vistas and charmingly posed interactions between Anja and her talking animal friends. The text, however, is a little too wordy and enthusiastic, with a too-jolly tone and a surfeit of exclamation points: "Anja! You're so tiny!" The ending falls back on the tired was-it-a-dream-or-not conclusion. "Maybe it wasn't a dream!" marvels Anja as she notices bits of vegetation on her sheets. With its intriguing photographs but less-than-compelling story, this will appeal mainly to fans of her first outing. (Picture book. 3-7)

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January 1, 2015

PreS-Gr 2-A small girl experiences an exciting adventure against a backdrop of breathtaking Scandinavian mountain scenery and among a host of adorable animals. Illustrated with superb, crisp, and richly colored digitized photographs, which are the real standout here, the rather pedestrian story tells how Anja shrinks to minuscule size after wishing to be tiny during a game of hide-and-seek with two cousins. Suddenly, the world looks very different as she encounters grass the size of trees and soars aloft on the back of a bird and a pinecone. Children should be able to suspend disbelief easily and will be delighted to imagine themselves as Anja does-coming face to face with a gigantic squirrel, duck, and rabbit and sailing in a "boat" made out of a sliver of tree bark. Clever manipulation of the images shows tiny Anja in stark size and spatial contrast with her surroundings and its various denizens; parents, teachers, and librarians should take advantage of the opportunity to stimulate math-themed conversations with children. In the end, Anja awakens, full-size, in her cousin's bed, and believes it has all been a dream-or has it?-Carol Goldman, Queens Library, NY

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