ぞうのボタン

Sweet and surprising

Playing dress-up is a favourite for many children. They will love this book, a sweet and funny visual story about animals dressing up. The title translates to "Elephant buttons", and on the cover we see an elephant with buttons underneath his belly. Why this is, is revealed on the first spread: The elephant was just a dress-up suit, the suit is unbuttoned and a horse appears. But the horse also has buttons underneath his belly...

And so the story goes, revealing all kinds of animals, both domestic and wild: a lion, a seal, a monkey, a duck and finally a mouse. The dramatic - and very funny - highlight happens when the mouse opens his buttons to reveal what animal hid inside...

The idea behind Elephant buttons is brilliant, and the artist has done exactly what the book needs to tell the story without making anything more complicated than it needs to be. The illustrations are pencils sketches of the animals only, with no surroundings or backgrounds. Each animal is placed on the right page of the spread, leaving the left page blank. This helps the child focus on on the story, and leaves plenty of room for the imagination.

This is a fun book for all ages, also for the youngest children. It is funny and surprising and beautiful. Throught her choices, the illustrator displays a deep understanding of children and their sense of humour.

This book is quite new to our collection, but we had a chance to read it for a group of children aged 2-5 this week. They could not stop laughing, and we ended up re-reading it five times in a row!

ぞうのボタン is currently out of print, but still available both in the Japanese and English version at websites for used books.