Author: Pamela Zagarenski
Books for Young Readers (2016)The book Henry & Leo by Pamela Zagarenski is about a boy who believes in the magic of his stuffed animal. The book tells the story from Henry's point of view and how he truly believes Leo, his stuffed animal is real despite the comments his family makes. The author does a great job at making the pictures in the book come to life. The target audience for this would be young children ages five to nine. This story is a quality picture book for young children because of the color and size of all of the illustrations.
The illustrations on each page are delicately drawn and painted and the reader is even able to see some of the brush marks and sketch lines. Every square inch of every page is filled with color. Each page includes contrast. Like on the page where the family is entering the woods, the tall vertical dark brown trees are surrounded by the light green and bright yellow color to represent the sun and grass. By implementing contrast, the reader's eyes are drawn to those spots first. The beginning of the story takes place during the day so the colors are more bright, light, and airy. As the book goes on, time passes on and moves towards night. These colors are darker, more mysterious, and not as comforting. Some of the pages in the middle of the book do not even have words on them which shows the reader how strong the illustrations are that they can speak without words to carry on the story. There are a wide variety of colors used within this book. In every page, you can see how the blues, greens, yellows, oranges, and reds all come together to make these beautiful illustrations. The sizes of each picture help understand the point the author is trying to make. The size of the picture is sometimes more important than the picture itself. The author uses size to make a point and is able to create perception through size. Most of the illustrations are large so a younger child is able to see all of the pictures. Yet, there are some that are created smaller than others to get a sense of perception. When the family was walking into the woods, the children were larger and at the bottom of the page. Whereas the parents were smaller and more in the top left corner. By looking at this illustration the reader is able to gather that the parents were further away from the woods and that their children were ahead of them. The author also seems to draw most things to scale. On the page where there is a bear and Leo, the bear looks massive compared to Leo the stuffed lion. There are other animals on these pages as well and they are all relative to their real-life size. The family is drawn to scale too, they are all different sizes and heights in respect to their age. By designating a specific size to each illustration, the author is making a statement to the audience.
The book Henry & Leo, showcases how a child's imagination really comes to life. The book also showcases the bond between a young child and their stuffed animals and how they consider them real and part of their family. The author and illustrator, Pamela Zagarenski has a real talent and was able to create unbelievable illustrations with great detail. The reader is able to stop and appreciate these details as the brush strokes are visible on each page. The readers are able to see the blending she had to do to create certain colors as some sections are darker than others with blending. The colors on each page are careful chosen to impress and catch the eye of each individual reader. The sizes of each individual illustration are drawn to scale and with the use of perception. In my opinion, this is an extremely effective picture book and I would want this book in my classroom and would recommend this to other colleagues and parents as well.
Review by Emily Longo
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