Look What I've Got

A welcome issue in paperback of Browne's slowly unfolding tale of the boastful and indulged boy who has everything. The thoughtful and introverted friend has the most valuable thing of all: an imagination. I read Browne's work all the time with eights up to twelves. I learn from this one that the author/artist slows down his telling and showing so that the young are brought to reflect upon the tale -- and their reading of it. The surreal world of Willy the Wimp and A Walk in the Park is here. Get ten-year-olds to tell their own story of the last page. This is the kind of reading -- powerful, imaginative, challenging -- that the schemes don't begin to engage in.