Jane Godwin (text), Beci Orpin (designer) and Hilary Walker (photographer), Watch this! A Book About Making Shapes, Scribe Publications, October 2018, 32 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781925322774
Here is a book about making shapes – twelve young children dressed in black can make different shapes with their bodies – triangles, squares, circles – and the reader is invited to see what shapes they can make. There are lots of different ways to make the same kind of shape, and lots of shapes to see in the one image.
This is a deceptively simple but appealing book. It is very well designed, with big blocks of strong colour and geometric shapes forming the backgrounds to the photographs of the children. The plainness of their matching outfits mean that their clothes do not distract from the shapes or the overall effect of the images. This isn’t a book for sitting quietly and listening, or for bedtimes! This is a book for getting up and moving, for making shapes and experimenting.
Recommended for preschool, early primary and public libraries, and for reading in groups so kids can make shapes together.
Reviewed by Rebecca Kemble
