Outdoor Opposites

Outdoor Opposites is an amazing concept-cum-story-cum-poetry book that functions at a range of levels. Enjoy the narrative as you join a group of multi-ethnic children on a camping trip in the great outdoors. Share a picnic, jump in a pond and fly a kite. Relish the poem – its bipartite structure of couplet-couplet-triplet rhymes is carefully concealed but nevertheless gives an underlying rhythm to the whole.

The use of space within the book controls the pace of the story; just as you think you have settled into the rhythm of double page spreads, single pages speed you up and actions across a page turn slow you down.

Even the opposites are far from simple. There are action opposites (stop/go, run/walk) emotion opposites (happy/sad) and concept opposites (in/out, good/bad). And as if all of that wasn’t enough, the whole book comes to life with the accompanying CD (music by The Flannery Brothers) with which you can sing and dance along.

This is a book to share, enjoy and return to time after time. The bright, cheerful colours reflect the joy of the book and you never know – you might even be able to start young readers off on an early creative career by encouraging them to think of indoor opposites, playtime opposites, garden opposites or family opposites. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.