PRECIOUS LITTLE

A tatterdemalion heroine wearing rags and stars falls into a dream hole and flies through the heavens.

Precious Little works for the Light Fantastics, watching the contortionists, Knots-R-Us, and the fire-eaters, Flambé and the Infernos, but longing to fly. Her friends Fat Chance and Tough Luck draw a wire across the "lucky dip," and she begins to cross it. She falls instead into the dip, which gives her a choice. She chooses “the Risk” and bursts into the sky with “galaxy swoops and over-the-moon backflips”—then, seeing the big top below, flies down into Fat and Tough’s waiting hands. The text swirls and makes loop-the-loops all over the pages, necessitating constant turning, all the better to pore over the spectacular art. Precious has blue-spangled hair and a skirt like a flower, striped tights and bare feet. She flies and floats through a universe of funhouse-mirror images, delicate pen lines and tea-stained backgrounds. The whole is a performance, the front endpapers stating “show starts now,” and the title page with curtain drawn, but it is more, too. A fable of imagination? An invitation to leave the familiar and test your wings? The comfort of returning to loved ones after an adventure? Perhaps all those things.

Children (and adults) can be lost for a long and pleasurable time amid the sparkles.