Sweet Shapes

February 15, 2018
Medina presents the third in a series (ABC Pasta and 1 Big Salad, both 2016) that brings together an early-learning concept, photographed food items, doodled black lines, and a unifying setting.Here, 12 shapes--fruits, sweets, and baked goods sourced in Medina's Washington, D.C., environs--are embodied as forest animals. Each shape is depicted and spelled out in all-caps at the top of a page. Thick black lines turn the bright pink circle of a macaron into an owl; oval jelly beans become the bodies of butterflies. Most of the sweets' shapes derive from the way they're cut: there's a square "Carmelita Deer" and a rectangular "Brownie Bear." This conceit stretches to include a cross, cut from a Rice Krispies square, for a wolf's face and arrows cut from pecan-pie slices standing in as chipmunks. Thick line drawings lend a coloring-book feel to the compositions, since many animals appear against white space. Typefaces selected for display and text type (Burbank big wide and Bodoni Six) compete with rather than complement each other, and digitally stylized branches, grass, and other bits add to the visual disjointedness. A recipe for chocolate-covered strawberries, requiring a double boiler, a pound of bittersweet chocolate, and an unspecified quantity of strawberries, is appended.While fans of the earlier titles might enjoy every bite of this one, it doesn't jell as well as its predecessors, conceptually or visually. (Picture book. 3-5)

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March 1, 2018

PreS-Gr 1-Medina creates a feast of sweet treats in the forest, from a rice treat wolf to a strawberry fox. Formatted like 1 Big Salad, this book emphasizes the shapes of various foods to create a host of wild animals. Each shape is named and highlighted along with the treat animals, including a circle, line, and even an arrow. Medina's art is created using the same digital tricks as her previous book, with the baked goods being credited as being in and around the area of Washington, DC. It wraps up with a simple recipe for creating chocolate-covered strawberries. The visuals of some treats are more successful than others, but they're all colorful and designed to attract attention. Pairing the two titles and ABC Pasta could lead to a delicious concept storytime. VERDICT Buy where concept books are needed and where Medina's other titles are popular.-Shana Shea, Windsor Public Library, CT

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