Ella Burfoot
(Macmillan Children’s Books)
Betty loves to go for a slide in the snow with her little red sled and one day as she is having a stroll, she keeps coming across random things: a pair of gloves, a jingly jangly fluffy hat, hairy snow boots, a woolly scarf and an enormous coat. They don’t belong to any of her arctic friends (who obviously don’t need them!). Eventually Betty finds a yeti hiding behind a rock. She is scared at first but soon realises he is feeling a little but vulnerable and decides to help him. Will she manage to make her other friends see past his scary appearance?
This is a lovely wintery story about not judging people at first sight and giving them a chance. Betty needs to look beyond the obvious (yeti=scary) to appreciate Yeti for who he really is. It is Anti-Bullying Week, and I think children are never too young to understand that we must not judge people on appearance or misconceptions.
I love Ella Burfoot’s work. Not only is her illustration style really engaging, with gorgeously drawn characters and beautiful wintery landscapes but I particularly like her use of colour. Just as in Darkness Slipped In, she is not shy of using a lot of black in her illustrations, and I love that. It brings a whole different feel to the illustrations. She uses a lot of bright colours to counterbalance the use of black. In Darkness Slipped In, it is all pink but here we have a lot of green, blue and white. I think her use of colour really makes her artwork stand out from a lot of other illustrators. But she also draws the cutest rounded characters, which makes her work particularly little-people-friendly.
The rhyming text helps make this story a lovely read-aloud, and the lovely wintery feel to the story makes it a perfect story to cuddle with in these long evenings. And did I mention the glittery cover?
This will make a lovely Christmas present for a little person!
Sent for review by publisher.
