Varmints - Softcover

Helen Ward, the author and illustrator of more than twenty-five children’s picture books, has been praised equally for her lucid prose and her meticulous illustrations. She lives in Gloucestershire, England.

Marc Craste is a senior animation director at London-based Studio Aka, where he has designed and directed numerous award-winning commercials. He is currently working on a short-film version of this book. He lives in London.

Grade 4 Up—This story of ecological doom and resurrection begins with an arresting cover portrait: a small, winsome creature (think part rabbit, part mole) looks straight out at readers from a lacy glade, alert but vulnerable. The book is divided into three sections by opaque pages resembling the opening countdown frames on a film. Brief oblique text relates how the creature's idyll in a sunny, bee-filled meadow is cut short by the arrival of "others" whose construction of towering, shadowy, noise-filled buildings ultimately blots out all light and all sounds. The small creature saves a bit of the natural world in the form of carefully nurtured wilderness plants. When the time is right, he releases the seeds into a pod-world. Once again a sunny, bee-filled meadow flourishes, and nature can begin anew. Filmmaker Craste's surreal digital paintings create three starkly contrasting worlds. The two meadow worlds, with their "whispering wind" and bird songs, are vast, open, and filled with light, both literally and figuratively. The industrial world, with its hopeless masses teeming far below its looming towers, is suffocating in its claustrophobic darkness. Lavender-gray text on blackish pages is difficult to read, perhaps intentionally. This oversize picture book will be most effective as a discussion book for children and adults who can bring environmentally informed interpretations to the abstract, transcendental story.—Kate McClelland, Perrot Memorial Library, Old Greenwich, CT
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.