THE LITTLE GREEN ENVELOPE

When a child’s friend moves away, an eager envelope gets the opportunity to embark on a journey.

Olive Zhi, a pale girl with dot eyes and black hair tied into two blunt pigtails, is not her cheery self when she visits Grandpa (also pale with dot eyes) one day. Her friend has moved, so Grandpa suggests sending a letter. Cut-paper illustrations in a natural pastel palette aptly highlight the real hero of this story: a green envelope who overhears their conversation from a desk drawer. This envelope, differentiated by two googly eyes on its flap side (allowing the flap’s lines to create wonderfully expressive faces), dreams of traveling to faraway places like other envelopes. After a moment of suspense, it is indeed chosen to accompany Olive’s letter to her friend. This sets off a montage of the letter’s travels, incorporating the clever use of paper products to create images of a mailbox, many hands of various shades, a mail truck, and a carrier’s bag. There are no facts about how the postal service works—the emphasis here is on how delighted the recipient is to see the envelope once it arrives. Future correspondence is sure to come. The book ends with a diagram for making your own envelope. Olive is cued as Chinese. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A sweet and straightforward homage to old-fashioned letter writing.