The Red Wheelbarrow (Briony Stewart, UQP)

The Red Wheelbarrow is a picture book with a difference; there are no words and there are two different stories depending on which side of the book you pick up. One narrative concerns itself with two girls playing with a red wheelbarrow while a fluffy white chicken pecks alongside them. The girls, of different sizes, have just a blanket and a bag of sweets as playthings. Briony Stewart celebrates the simple childhood joys of lollipop-licking and hiding under blankets. When the two begin fighting over the contents of the paper bag, it’s the trusty chicken who creates a diversion and stops the tears. Suitable for preschoolers, The Red Wheelbarrow encourages young children to use their imagination and make up their own narrative by following the images. The second story concerns a family of chooks who scuttle about doing typical fowl-like activities like digging for worms and sleeping under mother hen’s feathers. Though the pictures are charming, they could do with some embellishments and perhaps bigger brushstrokes—the worm is quite hard to see. In the chicken story, for instance, there are only subtle differences between the drawings that a young eye may not be able to detect.

Thuy On is a Melbourne-based reviewer and manuscript assessor

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Category: Reviews