A Circle of Friends
Kindergarten-Grade 2-In this wordless story about a circle of kindness, a boy leaves the lion's share of his fresh muffin with a homeless man sleeping on a park bench. When the man wakes, he shares crumbs with two birds that feed them to a fledgling. Later, the young bird flies down from its nest, picks up a seed that the man offers from his palm, and deposits it in the window box of the boy who is later blessed with an enormous sunflower. Carmi sparingly accessorizes the line drawings with color, using gold, scarlet, or green to highlight an element on each page that will carry the kindness forward. This simple tale in the spirit of Sarah Marwil Lamstein's I Like Your Buttons (Albert Whitman, 1999) and Cindy McKinley's One Smile (Illumination Arts, 2002) makes its point without being didactic or overly sentimental.Gay Lynn Van Vleck, Henrico County Library, Glen Allen, VACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.