Who What Where?
The world of crime doesn’t feature much in picturebooks, but in Who What Where? young readers have the chance to channel their inner super-sleuths and solve a mystery. On each spread a scene is set, a question is asked and a line-up is presented. Who jumped too high? Who got stuck in a tree trunk? Who stepped in paint? The kooky suspects are children or animals, all with particular features that will encourage readers to examine, discuss and root out the culprit.
This unusual long-shaped book follows the same format as Olivier Tallec’s Who Done It? Partial faces and shapes of funny animals are hidden in brightly coloured but minimalist scenes at home or in the garden. His comic-styled characters are reminiscent of Charlie Brown, with the added bonus of suspicious blue raccoons and confused red bears. Keen-eyed readers then need to spot the clues in the main scene to determine which of the suspects got themselves into a spot of bother. But it’s not always that easy, so expect some debate. An excellent book for encouraging skills of imagination, observation and conjecture. It will stimulate discussion on reasoning, incite hilarity at the contrived situations and, best of all, show how a picture really does say a thousand words. Funny, clever and slightly bonkers.
