Flora and the penguin
By: Molly Idle
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC, USA, 2015 (Our version, "Molly e il pinguino", Carlo Gallucci editore, Italia, 2015)
Format: Hardcover with flaps and a large fold-out page
An frosty dance of friendship
"Flora and the penguin" is part of a series of books by illustrator Molly Idle, called "Flora and her feathered friends". The first one, "Flora and the flamingo", recieved the prestigious Caldecott Honor award. It was followed by two other silent books, "Flora and the peacocks" and "Flora and the penguin". All three books evolve around the girl Molly, who likes birds and dancing.
In this particular book, her dance partner is a penguin, and she has switched her pointe shoes from "Molly and the flamingo" with ice skates. The ice adds an interesting, visual element to the book, we see action taking place both above and beneath the ice simultaneously in some of the pictures. As with the other two books, "Flora and the penguin" has a restricted color scheme, this time of icy blues and contrasting yellows.
Mollly meets her new friend, the penguin, while putting on her skates to go ice dancing. They greet each other and dance together, their moves perfectly synchronized. As in the other books in the series, there is a small conflict, but it is resolved and there is a happy ending. What makes the book interesting is Idle´s wonderful expressive illustrations and her use of flaps at the exactly right places in the story. Children will have lots of fun opening the flaps to see what happens next, and their brilliant placements add extra suspense and drama. The resolving of the conflict is portrayed in a magnificent, four-pages wide fold-out spread.
Most of the spreads consist of one big picture, apart from one where the duo´s dance is shown like a series of movements. The compositions of the pages are beautiful. As readers, we are invited to glide with the two protagonists in this dance of friendship, hurt feelings and reconciliation.
Maybe because to the commercial success of these books, the "Flora" series has taken a turn from wordless art to didactic books: The four last books in the series are about learning numbers, opposites, colors or the alphabeth. Idle´s illustrations are still gorgeous, but needless to say these "how to" books do not have the same magic as the silent ones. Let´s hope Flora finds another feathered friend to have a wordless adventure with soon!
