Danny Parker (text), Ruth de Vos (illustrator), Shine, Fremantle Press, March 2021, 32 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781760990213
You can’t go wrong with rhyme. This big book offers the reader a bouncy rhyming couplet across each double-page in a text that’s splashed across wildly chaotic, happy, messy, jangling scenes of a family life where there are three young children and two madly busy adults in love with them. ‘In my shiny, you’re the shine,’ gives you a flavour of the wit, poetic wordplay and cuddly-love evoked in this beautifully made book. Ruth de Vos’s illustrations in watercolour, pencil, screen-print and digital manipulation are clever, detailed, lively and full of fun and colour. There is a lot to look at and savour on every double-page. The only reservation I have about this book is that the parents are able to take family chaos and kiddy naughtiness in their stride. They are my heroes.
Great to read aloud. Highly recommended.
Reviewed by Kevin Brophy
