Circle

This is the sixth collaboration between this well-matched author and illustrator, and the third of their shape trilogy: Square, Triangle, and, now, Circle. In this wry fable, Circle goes in search of Triangle, who, against express instruction, has gone into the dark behind the waterfall. Circle’s initial exasperation and anxiety is tempered by an acknowledgement of the love s/he feels for the errant shape. But, once they find one another, the two shapes realise that theirs are not the only pairs of eyes scanning the dark. Barnett asks a simple but searching question about how our preconceptions may determine and restrict our experience of the world. Once more, Klassen displays his mastery of the minimal, as, in the darkness behind the waterfall, his smudgily substantial characters with their stumpy legs are reduced to the almond whites and ball black pupils of their improbable, but oh-so expressive, eyes.