STARTED & FINISHED:

Heide, Florence Parry. (1971). The shrinking of Treehorn. New York: Holiday House.

[CHARMED by this black comedic tale with illustrations by Edward Gorey. A little kid starts shrinking and all that his parents can say about it are, "If you want to pretend you're shrinking, that's all right as long as you don't do it at the table", and, "I wonder if he's doing it on purpose. Just to be different." Witty, hilarious dialog that will strike a chord with any disenfranchised youth. There are two more of these that I need to pick up and read.]




Geisert, Arthur. (2002). The giant ball of string. Boston: Walter Lorraine/Houghton Mifflin.

[Mixed feelings on this one. I'm quite drawn to Geisert's illustrations, but the story rubs me the wrong way. So, there's this town of pigs that take pride in the fact that they are in possession of the largest ball of string in the world. One night, the ball of string is washed away in a rainstorm and a town downstream finds it, and, KNOWING that the ball of string belongs to another town STILL DECIDES TO KEEP IT AS THEIR OWN! What kind of message is that? Sure, the citizens of the town that really own the string ball come up with an intricate and clever plot to get it back, but...]

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