My Valley

Starred review from May 8, 2017
French artist Ponti’s (Chick and Chickie Play All Day!) encyclopedic, large-format guide to the lives of Twims—furry woodland creatures with small ears and long, squirrel-like tails—unfolds through the voice of a young Twims named Poochie-Blue. (Fanciful names abound: among Poochie-Blue’s many siblings are Smarghoula and Olly-Booly.) In Waters’s sensitive translation, family stories (“In my house tree, way on top, there is the Star Room where we were all born”), historical notes (“Piong, a young child, got lost in a forest. He came out three hundred years later, a little bit bigger”), and meditations on the future (“O’Mess-Messian dreams of the book he will become one day when his life as a tree is over”) combine to present a multidimensional picture of the Twims’s world. Ponti’s dreamy paintings of towering trees and distant hills are worth lingering over. The same view of Poochie-Blue’s valley appears repeatedly, painted at different times of the day and in different seasons, offering readers the chance to grow to love it as the Twims do. Fans of immersive fantasy worlds will feel that they have discovered a treasure. Ages 5–9.

Starred review from December 1, 2016
A mix of comical vignettes and broad vistas illustrates an account of the lives and misadventures of a clan of tiny Twims.It must have been a challenge to translate: the oversized album, originally published in French in 1998, is narrated by Poochie-Blue--who introduces Sowhatty, Nothin'-Doin', and many like-named members of a teeming extended family as the book opens. He then takes readers on a tour of his hollow cliffside House Tree, the Forest of Lost Children, the Theater of Hissy Fits (where grievances can be acted out), and the cemetery gardens especially tailored for lovers of music or mountains, for haters, readers, or Twims just "waiting for the Goochnies to return." In between, he tells of the mushroomlike Goochnies' mysterious disappearance, of children who fell from the sky (actually from a passing windblown apartment house), of a Sad Giant's visit, and of weather and seasons in the idyllic seaside valley. Along with a labeled area map and a cutaway of the House Tree, Ponti alternates panels of Twims, who look like anthropomorphic lemmings (uniform in color but a little varied in features and dress), in action with immersive, full-page or larger land- and seascapes that seem to go on forever while offering multitudinous crags, glades and foreground features to investigate. Like Poochie-Blue, visitors to the valley will be in no hurry to leave. (Picture book. 5-9)

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February 1, 2017

PreS-Gr 2-A rare English-language translation brings Ponti, a beloved children's book creator in France, to American audiences for the first time since Chick and Chickie Play All Day. The shelf-defeating trim size allows ample space for Ponti's retro illustrations and whimsical style as he introduces the Twims, round-faced rodentlike creatures with large families and extensive free time. The book contains no narrative arc but dips in and out of the geographic territory, lifestyle, and traditions of the verdant valley's cutesy denizens. Each spread offers a new aspect of the Twims' experience-some thoughtful, some twee, and almost all designed to appeal to lovers of coziness and domestic details. A tour of the central family's House Tree, for example, provides a cutaway reminiscent of the art in Jill Barklem's "Brambly Hedge," with a dash of absurdism as the elevation reveals a trapeze room and a swimming pool among the winter storerooms and open hearths. The vignettes shift from playful (a vast game of wind-borne "telephone") to contemplative (a gorgeous panorama from atop a solitary staircase) to bizarre (a flying apartment building shedding Twims); the scattershot nature of the book invites readers to pore over the detailed illustrations and immerse themselves in the fanciful mythology.

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2017
Grades 1-3 Poochie-Blue is one of many Twims, squirrel-like creatures who live in a tree overlooking a beautiful valley, and, in this oversize picture book, he gives readers a tour of his home and its many wonders over the course of the year. Poochie-Blue tells of the valley's islands, like Surprise Island, where you find a new present every day; Dads' Night ( A big statue of Dad Twims appears on the mountain. And all dads go inside it to learn how to be a dad ); the Theater of Hissy Fits, where Twims go when they get mad; and plenty more. The paragraphs of surreal snippets are full of nonsensical language, but there are also moments of pithy meaning, like when Poochie-Blue explains Twims cemeteries. While there's no real narrative, Ponti's beautiful, intricate illustrations contain strange details hinting at larger stories. The guileless narrative sounds like it came directly from the brain of a child with a vivid imagination, and fanciful kids drawn by the enchanting artwork might find their own imaginations sparked by this odd, playful French import.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)