Book Description
for Big Bug by Henry Cole
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
Size is a matter of relativity in this deceptively simple, striking picture book. The opening page spread features a “Big bug” — a ladybug shown so large it doesn’t quite fit on the two pages. With a turn of the page, we see the ladybug is now small in relation to the “Big leaf” on which it sits. Every turn of the page continues to zoom farther out as the handsome paintings show the thing that was large is now small in comparison to a newly introduced object: a flower, a dog, a cow, a farm and then “Big…Big sky” (with the farm as part of the landscape). Then the comparisons reverse course, with every new object introduced “Little” in comparison to what came before, but “Big” in comparison to what comes next. Each turn of the page moves in closer and closer on details of the farm (barn, house, window, dog) in this wonderful exercise in comparison and perspective that’s terrifically executed. (Ages 3–7)
CCBC Choices 2015. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2015. Used with permission.