Coppernickel, The Invention
PreSchool-Grade 2—Sometimes keeping things simple is the best practice. That is the moral of this story about two best friends, Coppernickel the bird and Tungsten the dog, who set out to invent a machine for picking hard-to-reach elderberries. The clever cartoon characters are outlined in bold strokes, filled in with flat colors, and have elongated dot eyes. They are quite expressive despite their minimalist rendering. The slightest change in line—the shape of his mouth, for instance—has Tungsten shifting from reflective to horrified to angry. As both he and Coppernickel sketch out their inventions on sheets of paper, the bird's illustrations rapidly spill over to the walls and the floor, while the dog's sheet remains relatively blank. Although essentially a line drawing, Coppernickel's diagram is quite complicated in the number of gears it has; and when he becomes physically caught in his own invention, van Reek shifts to depicting the sequence of events in a series of miniature square panels. The eclectic mix of visual simplicity and detail combined with straightforward text results in a timeless tale of imagination and friendship that children will be drawn to and enjoy again and again.—Kim T. Ha, Elkridge Branch Library, MDCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.