A very small climber

NZ Writer and Illustrator

Juliette MacIver, illustrated by Link Choi

Henry Bob Bobbalich

Scholastic 2016  $18.99pb 32pp

ISBN 978 1 7754 3322 4

Themes: Adventurous children/ Anger/ Climbing/ Fathers and sons/ Stories in rhyme

Henry Bob Bobbalich was a small boy with a great sense of adventure especially when it came to climbing  - walls/ trees/ cliffs – nothing was too tall or too difficult – he could scale them all. However this didn’t suit his unimaginative school teacher who felt the boy should be concentrating on matters closer to the ground and Henry lost his spirit. It took his father, a small girl falling from a cliff and a large elephant to turn his fate and for him to be able to listen to the voice inside his head and to follow the sort of life he knew was right for him. Interesting illustrations from Link Choi an Auckland based artist who specialises in producing picture books for adults (this may be his first picture book for children?) and whose prints are available for view on the net. One of the charms of the book is you are really not quite sure where and when it is set. Children will have their own ideas.  As she did in Grasshoppers Dance  (Scholastic 2015) Juliette MacIver has a wonderful way with words  (They read palms and the Psalms, applied balms they had made…) which makes it a pleasure to read aloud.

Preschool up/ Age 4 up

(Is it really a week since I entered anything on this Blog?  Put it down to the school holidays and an avalanche of writers wanting their work assessed! BM)