GIRL MEETS BOY/BOY MEETS GIRL

Boy meets girl and girl meets boy in a bidirectional experiment that busts linear narrative to smithereens. Both illustrations and text are exemplars of minimalism, the simple cast of characters being made up of loose daubs of bright paint, which miraculously evoke the sheer essence of things. The text reads identically both forward and backward, each word—one to a page—appearing both right-side-up and upside-down. Readers are exhorted to “keep reading . . . even if you have to stand on your head!”—an instruction they’ll need to bear in mind, as the straightforward narration (“Girl meets red dog wearing glasses under table in shade and sees . . .”) goes absolutely wonky once past the middle (“sunshine in chair on nothing wearing cat green meets Boy”). Likewise, the green cat sunning itself properly in a chair is, on the return trip, suddenly suspended upside-down in space—but not if you stand on your head. It’s utterly brilliant in its simplicity and daring, but it remains to be seen whether concretely thinking preschoolers will be won over by the dovetailing of the narratives—or just plain mystified. (Picture book. 3-6)