What four-year-old boy wouldn't love a story that includes a talking cow patty? Plus an alligator, a cactus, and a thieving raccoon who gets his comeuppance. Wonderful book. ( )

Old Granny and the Bean Thief is an imaginative folktale rich in stylized paintings and language alike. DeFelice crafts a magical southwestern landscape where cowpaties, pecans, snakes and prickly pears talk to granny along her journey into town to find the sheriff, before ultimately joining forces to help a sassy granny capture the bean thief.

The dialogue and language choices throughout the story are the real gems. Old Granny, for example, is characterized as “madder than a pussycat thrown into a pond” which not only evokes a vivid image but sounds delightfully comedic to a young reader. I think the beauty of this story is it’s simplistic plot, which involves a fair amount of repetition but allows the language and illustrations to shine brightly.

The fantastic color palate chosen for the illustrations does a great job connecting the language to the southwestern landscape. While the turquoise, adobe, and corn colored brushstrokes remain consistent in color, scale and style, I enjoy how some page spreads feature just the characters in action against a white background while others are fully saturated scenes bleeding from one page to the next.

This book is an example of fantasy because snakes and nuts and cow pies would really talk to granny and a raccoon could really steal granny beans but it makes sense with the story.
media: paint ( )