A Bit More Bert

A follow up to The Adventures of Bert, this collaboration between two master picture book makers displays a similarly minimalist approach to story telling. Bert is a cheery rotund everyman in a three-generation family where everybody including the dog is called Bert. Only one of the stories exceeds 100 words in length and not much happens in any of them: Bert introduces his dog, has a haircut, avoids eating his cabbage, shares his crisps, loses and finds his dog, then goes to bed. That’s it, but the play of the page-filling paintings with a simple text that talks to the reader creates a sequence of episodes that are funny in themselves and full of potential for further humorous exploration with young readers.