PERFECT SQUARE


30 December 2010 PERFECT SQUARE by Michael Hall, Greenwillow, March 2011, 40p., ISBN: 978-0-06-191513-0

 
"I've got a square look I'll show you
I got four sides on me
All my sides are the same size
Like a good looking square should be"
-- Sesame Street, "It's Hip to be a Square" 
 
"It was a perfect square.  It had four matching corners and four equal sides.  "And it was perfectly happy.
"But on Monday, the square was cut into pieces and poked full of holes.  It wasn't a perfect square anymore. 
"So it made itself into a fountain that babbled and giggled and clapped."
 
Over the course of six days, this perfect square is cut and poked, torn into scraps, shredded in strips, shattered, snipped into ribbons, and crumpled and ripped and wrinkled.  And in the process  -- using the disassembled pieces -- that perfect square repeatedly recreates and reassembles itself into a fountain, a garden, a park, a bridge, a river, and a mountain.
 
(You'll need to read PERFECT SQUARE to discover what happens on Sunday when the square tires of waiting for something to next befall it.)
 
I love how Hall's use acrylic monotype ink prints which day by day progress through shades of the primaries and secondaries (from red to orange to yellow to green to blue to purple and back to red) result in the square's repeatedly being so visually interesting each time it is disassembled, before the pieces are brought together into these various recreations.  It makes PERFECT SQUARE so much more satisfying than many other picturebooks that  can similarly be used to promote imagination and creativity.
 
PERFECT SQUARE leaves me grinning -- just like the square on the cover.
 
Richie Partington, MLIS
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