The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Eh. Santat had a good time making a raft of imaginary friends, all of whom were creatures instead of people. The little marshmallowy, pokemonny main character can't wait around for someone to imagine him. This is a fun concept, but the story itself has little to it other than that concept. An uneventful and fairly boring search ends just right. Eh.
Santat's sensibility for how to compose a double-page spread is very good--it was especially interesting to see some of what he did with contrast in the backgrounds in the middle spreads. The figure illustrations are in a normalized style, very much a tv animation style. I thought it was okay, but not terribly interesting to look at over and over again. (Which reminds me: Cartoon Network's "Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends" does a much better job at playing around with the imaginary friend concept.)
Overall, this book doesn't really match up to some of the other Caldecott contenders this year ([b:Draw!|20759593|Draw!|Raúl Colón|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1394422502s/20759593.jpg|24510862], [b:The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus|20696727|The Right Word Roget and His Thesaurus|Jennifer Fisher Bryant|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1424201895s/20696727.jpg|40016232])...and yet it won the medal. Eh.
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