Review of
Rose and the Wish Thing: A Journey of Friendship, by
Caroline Magerl
9780553536171
Three out of five star book
This is fundamentally a good story, Rose has moved and
she sees the town where she now lives. She is experiencing the loneliness of
being the new kid and so she looks out the window and makes a wish. At first,
the purpose of the wish is indeterminate, the reader suspects that the goal is
to find some new friends, but it is never made explicit. Rose searches in many
places in her new town and eventually she encounters the point of her wish.
I never had to experience the trauma of moving to a
new school, but I knew several children that came to mine. They would talk
about the feelings of uncertainty and alienation as the teacher introduced them
to the other people in their class. Ironically, in many cases it was the
unpopular children that were the first to interact with them.
There is very
little text in the book and it is at the level of the very young reader. Many
of the pages contain only illustrations. Which leads me to the problem that I
have with it. The style of the images is that of being indeterminate and
looking washed out. There is a significant blandness to the coloration as well
as a fuzziness to the objects in the illustrations.
This will make
it difficult for the eyes of the beginning reader to discern the content. Given
the small amount of text, the illustrations must contain a great deal of the
story and in this case they do not. In my opinion, this is a serious flaw.
This book was made available for free for review
purposes
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